Transforming Ties: Modi a big HIT in Nepal, India unveils $1 billion credit

HIT Nepal with Highways, I-ways and Tansways. India has just found a winning formula to transform its relations with Nepal as Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled $1 billion line of credit for a host of development projects in the neighbouring country. In the first prime ministerial visit from India in the last 17 years, Modi launched a charm offensive on his maiden visit to the picturesque Himalayan state, which is intimately bound with India by deep-seated cultural and religious ties.

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Modi’s visit to Nepal: A fresh start, full of possibilities

In this wide-ranging conversation with Manish Chand, Editor-in-Chief, India Writes Network, www.indiawrites.org, Mr Jayant Prasad, a former ambassador of India to Nepal, speaks about the importance of Prime Minister Modi’s August 3-4 visit to Nepal, the potential of hydropower cooperation which can transform Nepal into the richest country in South Asia, and his response to speculation about a developing India-China rivalry in the Himalayan state, a nascent democracy which is navigating its journey to national renewal.

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WTO deal: India places developed world in a spot

India has shown the industrialised countries they can longer have their way in multilateral trade negotiations at the expense of the developing world. The WTO General Council meeting that concluded in Geneva on July 31 failed to approve the protocol of amendment proposed by the 9th ministerial conference in Bali for enshrining the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) into the WTO Marrakesh Agreement.

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Strategic Dialogue: The 4-5-6 of India-US relations

The “defining partnership of the 21st century” is poised for a new beginning as India and the US hold their first strategic dialogue this week after the installation of a new government in New Delhi. Re-energising the relationship, which is often seen by some to have plateaued after the high of the transformational civil nuclear deal of 2008, and mapping new frontiers of engagement will be the overarching focus of India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and US Secretary of State John Kerry when they hold full-spectrum talks in New Delhi July 31.
The governments come and go, but the people of the two countries will make sure that India and the US will remain robustly engaged democracies, rejuvenating each other’s society and system with ideas, initiative and innovations, fulfilling the “extraordinary promise” of what President Obama has famously called “the defining partnership of the 21st century.”

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