India Reach

With elections over, the voting process for the world’s largest elections will begin. India, also the world’s largest democracy, will count approximately 430 million votes in order to figure out the winners of the contest. Manmohan Singh, the current prime minister of the country, hopes to become the first incumbent to win re-election in over 40 years. It will be interesting to see how things unfold, but it will certainly be worth the wait as the country’s future lies in the hands of these winners. Stay tuned for more news on the elections as results and analysis come out over the next few days.

While browsing the web the other day, I ran across a site that many of you may be interested in, so I decided to share it. India Talks is an online community where people can discuss everything related to India. It is a great place to meet other Indians or if you aren’t Indian, just other people who are interested in or want to learn about the country. The fairly new site has a great look and feel and it has a lot to do including a discussion forum, horoscopes, an arcade and a radio channel. The discussion forum covers a variety of topics from Indian politics to Bollywood to travel and sports. It is definitely worth a visit; check out India Talk Forums today!

With the tremendous worldwide success of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, Bollywood has been getting a lot of attention around the world lately. Many movie experts are predicting closer ties between Hollywood and the world’s largest producer of movies, Bollywood. This could mean more American coverage of Indian films and a closer tie between the two movie headquarters could be very good for both sides in terms of profit and larger audiences.

Slumdog Millionaire has shown that Indian movies do have the potential for great success outside of India, with Boyle’s movie winning several awards including an astounding eight Oscars. It will be interesting to see how the relationship between the movie giants in India and America develops as a result of what we have seen with Slumdog.

India was happy to learn that the Pakistani government finally admitted that some of the scheming of the Mumbai attacks did happen on their soil, but the country is still looking for help from its neighbor. Indian officials are disappointed with what seems to be a lack of effort on the part of the Pakistani government in order to fight terrorism. Pakistan has started to become a little bit active in the fight by holding a small group of people who it believes were behind part of the attacks, but India is still looking for more assistance. Specifically, the government wants Pakistan to put more pressure on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terror group who many believe was behind the attacks. The Indian government has asked Pakistan to shut down the group and to turn over the members that are believed to be guilty.

According to Bloomberg press, Westpac Banking Corporation is expecting the Indian Rupee to strength this year by 1%. A currency strategist at the company says that the Rupee will be especially strong against the United States dollar because of the severe recession in America, which is expected to lower confidence in the USD.

Westpac is bullish on the Indian Rupee because of India’s strong domestic demand for goods and its small reliance on international exports. The Rupee has already gained .4% value this year. The Indian economy is still growing at a healthy rate of 7.1%, but it is low compared to recent trends. In the three years before March 2008, the growth rate was an astounding 9.3%. In response to the reduction in growth, the Reserve Bank of India is expected to lower rates in order to encourage lending.

Welcome to IndiaReach.org, a new website about the great country of India. Stay tuned for discussions on Indian history, culture, and the latest news (among other things.)