News: Time magazine lauds India's growth

(BL 13/06/2006) New Delhi - Describing India as a country that can no longer be ignored, prestigious American news magazine Time has said the country's rise is for real but it needs to be careful about traps like the latest stock market slide.

"Once shunned for its hapless protectionism, suffocating bureaucracy and all-round commercial torpor, (India) can no longer be ignored," Time said referring to global IT major IBM's decision to invest $6 billion right after the stock market crash earlier in the month in a special report on India in its June issue.

"The country's growth rate is approaching that of Asia's other economic juggernaut, China. India is being remade, as it is increasingly integrated to the global economy," it added.

The report, however, cautioned that as the Asian Elephant awakes, there could be traps ahead.

"Yet, India's stock market slide may be trying to tell us something: Elephant traps lie ahead," it said, adding that prosperity and progress have not touched 5,50,000 villages where two-thirds of India's population live.

In many ways the country is growing in spite of itself, it said.

According to Time magazine, millions of women in India are not getting the education they need. Transportation networks and electrical grids, which are crucial to industrial development and job creation, are so dilapidated that it would need many years t o modernise them.