Foreign policy is a strange terrain where even the best-laid plans of nations have to be moulded and remoulded, constructed and deconstructed, depending on the plans of other actors.
The World Bank has forecast slower world growth, for the current year and the next, at 2.9% and 3%, respectively. Emerging markets and developing economies, which normally gallop ahead of the rest of the world, are expected to grow at just 3.4% this year, with Covid- and zero-Covid-afflicted China growing at a rate slower than the US for the first time in 40 years or so. Does this cripple India's chance of growing at least 7%? It does not, and not because the World Bank pegs India's growth rate at 7.5%, higher than the Reserve Bank of India's own estimate of 7.2%.