India

In Europe, they’ve been called Frankenfoods. In India, Africa and other developing areas of the world, they’re viewed by many as miracles.

Move over BRIC. RIC or the troika of Russia, India and China are taking over. A regional formation will take up international issues like the reform of the UN and the Security Council, according to Konstantin V Vnukov, director, first Asia department, Russian foreign ministry, and head of delegation for trilateral cooperation between India, Russia and China, on a visit to the capital for the seventh ministerial of the troika.

NEW DELHI: Noting that India needed an anti-missile defence, the US today talked about the possibility of cooperation in developing such a shield. "We understand India's needs for an anti-missile shield," visiting Defence Secretary Robert Gates said he held talks with his counterpart A K Antony.

The continued rise of the emerging economies, particularly India and China, is never far from the headlines. What impact these economies will have on the twenty-first century is the subject of much debate, with the possibility of a shift in global political power a recurring theme. It is often assumed that the emerging economies are following the same path to development that the established economic powers did - but this assumption is worth questioning.

As U.S. unilateralism has asserted its role as the sole global superpower, the rest of the world is exploring a variety of ways of pushing back. One is the creation of several new regional security consortiums which are independent of the U.S.

Bric - another acronym every silicon.com reader should be aware of and, no, it's nothing to do with Microsoft or operating systems. It actually stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China and was coined by the investment bank Goldman Sachs when they published a report titled Dreaming of Brics in 2003. The report was essentially some controlled future gazing, based on economic fundamentals and projections right out to 2050.

The "BRIC" nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China - are all experiencing rising inflation and adopting similar measures to prevent prices of goods spiraling out of control, according to a report by China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

India today joined the elite group of world's five biggest holders of foreign exchange reserves as it added about 4.5 billion dollars last week to take the kitty to 261 billion dollars.

It seems that worries over China dumping its reserves of a trillion, or so, American dollars are just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Sovereign wealth funds, opaque investment funds controlled by cash-rich governments like China, Abu Dhabi and Russia, are set to buy more emerging markets currencies, at the expense of their more established counterparts. In other words these funds, which have reserves totaling $2.3 trillion, are set to sell off more American dollars, euros and British pounds.

Even as Russo-American tensions smolder from Eastern Europe and Central Asia to the Arctic seabed, the secretary of state is denying the onset of a renewed Cold War. Yet, unmistakable signals of a counter-balancing effort by Russia and China were sent last month through the largest-ever war games of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (S.C.O.), a six-nation anti-United States alliance.