Mr. Kanwal: Why are you pushing the line that the proposed port-rail route from India to Europe is somehow in competition with the Chinese belt-road route? It is not. Let the Chinese make the belt-road a trade route that benefits all the countries that were suckered in. It is for only for the Chinese and fatal debt trap for the rest. Ask the Sri Lankans; ask the Pakistanis or even the Italians. Belt-road will suffer a natural death from lack of any return from investments.

I have serious apprehension, if congress gets into power 😢😢😢😢😢

There are two aspects to the propsed IMEC corridor. Cost of building and the cost advantage after the corridor becomes operative.

The two countries involved in this, UAE and Saudi, are not going to be the major beneficiaries. That leaves Jordan, Israel and Greece all of which have limited scope to exploit this more than the rent earning potential of this project which will be due only after the corridor becomes operative.

That leaves European partners. They will not have overwhelming advantage after balancing out time gain advantage over cost disadvantage.

Economic corridors connecting Asia with Europe are not always attractive cost advantage wise. This may be true particularly in the case of India – ME – Europe corridor. Here the adage – Time is Money – doesn't justify so much because delivery over this route is going to be not cost effective under present terms. For China the opposite may be true.

Corridor is not just about transportation of goods. It is about connectivity which means ability to channel movements of goods as well as energy and communication lines. It is also about strategic derisking by means of creating alternatives. It can also be the means of facilitating the integration of chain of economies which are not very involved in trade etc due to historical and political reasons. Chances of success for any given corridor will be more based on solving the risk perceptions and on opportunities for aligning trade and strategic interests that it will create for countries rather than cost and time considerations alone.

Routes traversing through multiple countries mean encountering not only varied geographies but also politics, geopolitics etc which is minimal for maritime trade routes.

The competing economic corridors involving rival countries and opposing strategic intiatives will face road blocks. The emerging world order is not going to consolidate any sooner and it might take atleast a decade. Usually change of world order requires some kind of a major war between the countries that is not happening in the present day nuclear deterent regime.

In the current assessment the urgency for the newly proposed corridor is not overwhelming. It is more about creating distraction for China's BRI.

The key differentiator between IMEC and BRI is going to be the strategic one in that BRI is a China lead initiative with China centered as the beneficiary while IMEC is US lead initiative in which the direct beneficiaries are the participating nations and US is the strategic guarantor of the project.

Interesting days ahead. Good time to speculate. 😴

Satyamev Jayate! 🪷
Jai Hind!! 🫡

Rahul. Request you teach Gaurav Sawant dignified behaviour as an anchor and how not to treat guests as scum as he behaved with Andrew Yeung. It was abdominal and Andrew deserves a public apology and Gaurav a boot. Gaurav becoming another Arnab, thinking too much of his own intelligence.

All said and done, Modi ji is simply an awesome human being, an awesome personality, an awesome leader, an awesome visionary, an awesome Statesman…… 👌🌹🙏🥰

Bharat is really very lucky to have him at our country's helm, at this point in our history….. 🙏

The very fact that we call upon William Dalyrimple to know our histort, shows how much colonized are we, still. And he mentions two more Colonized Article Writers – Anirudh Kanisetti & Manu Pillai. Mcaulay was right about us. He took the self respect completely out of us, once they took the knowledge out of us.

What an amazing interview south has all history in their history with epics but only north don't want to listen ir atleast read . I was there i. Arikannedu where the excavations prroved all these things this gentleman mentioned but we were still stuck with nehruviain historians. In Tamil 5 epics says more than this even before common era.