Isolated Freak - As always, it is nice to hear what you have to say. Before I go on to comment, I want to clarify that the reason I am quoting parts of your last post are so that I can keep my reply coherent and I am not doing it with any malicious intent to slice and dice your argument. I get the big picture argument you are making and am mindful of it in my comments. That said, I have the following comments: "Is it in India's best interest to let Nepal develop? Rephrase: Will India let Nepal take advantage of its growing economy? A weak, poor and dependant Nepal is in India's strategic and political interests. This is why our development plans have failed again and again." On the contrary, you could argue such a poor Nepal is against India's interests because poverty to create instability in Nepal, as has been the case of late, and such instabillity has the potential to spill over into India. "Since strategic interests now include economic interests, it is in India's interests to exploit the Nepali market, i.e., sell its products from soap to cars in Nepali market. " But if we are poor, how can we buy their goods? You would think it is in their interest for us to have the kind of purchasing power required to buy these goods, no? If you are trying to sell something to someone, it seems a bit absurd to think you don't want them to have the money to pay you for your goods. "It has to do what it has to do to preserve its national interests as one maxim of IR states that foreign policy is out of necessity, not out of sympathy. The problem is on our side: We haven't been full able to assert our national interests and the worst of all, we don't even have a policy to deal with India. India is either our Big Brother and its OK to depend on it or its a pure villian and should be c riticized whenever you get the chance to do so. Our leaders depend on India for everything. And this gives India an "strategic" upper hand when dealing with Nepal." Agree. "As a result, we will not industrialize and even for small consumer goods we will depend on India, and as a result, we will not be able to rise up economically." We will never be able to compete with them for soap and Maruti cars and shoudn't try to. One, among many, examples of how we might be able to make money from them would be by attracting the manufacturers of ancilliary industries to Nepal so that when they set up shop in Nepal we get jobs created in our country which will give people the opportunity to create wealth and move out of poverty. Their motivation to do business in Nepal would be the cheaper labor and more favorable tax and financial benefits if that's something we can get our government to do. And this is not a pipe dream. Some of this had already started with firms like Nepal Level and Dabur setting up shop in Nepal, although the Maoist insurgency forced them to scale back and even close operations. The same kind of potential also exists in the services industries. We could be sub-contractors to Indian firms who are looking for cheaper talent to serve their clients in the West. With BPO, IT and other services related work coming to India, we definately have the potential to get work out of the Indians who are bound to reach capacity issues or who may simply be looking for cheaper ways to sub work. Even China has capacity issue at times and has been looking at sub-ing out work to places like Vietnam and Thailand so it's not far fetched to think India might need to do the same when it reaches that point. Yes, that may not sound like glamorous stuff, but economic development often takes the form of several baby steps before it sees a giant step or two. Business, and just not politics or military alone, is likely, in my opinion, to drive India's foreign policy in the days ahead if recent trends like this are anything to go by. That is how I see us being able to use India's economic growth for our advantage.