A new BBC World poll says that people in the Philippines, South Korea, France, Finland and Brazil think India is a negative influence on the world (via Style Station). Pakistan was not polled. On the other hand, Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, the UK and Russia rate India highly. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the African countries polled are most neutral about India, while Sri Lanka and India are most neutral about the U.S.

Though India’s global profile has grown significantly over the last year, it fails to elicit strong feelings… The exceptions are two Muslim countries with positive views: Iran (71% positive) and Afghanistan (59% positive). The only country with widespread negative views is the Philippines (57% negative). Notably, India’s small neighbor Sri Lanka has a mere 4 percent reporting negative views and a robust 49 percent expressing a positive one.

Europeans are divided about India. At the positive end of the spectrum is Great Britain (49% positive, 30% negative) and Russia (47% positive, 10% negative), while at the other end are France and Finland–both being 27 percent positive and 44 percent negative. The US leans slightly positively (39% positive, 35% negative). [Link]

India has the strange distinction of being most loved by the most hated, Iran. Forty-three percent of the Indians polled seemed only lukewarm about their own country:

Interestingly, Indians themselves are the most tepid or modest in their self-estimates. While in most countries a large majority give their country a positive rating, among Indians only 47 percent give India a positive rating, but only 10 percent give it a negative rating. [Link]

The Philippines and Brazil are economic competitors of India. The others are more puzzling: South Korea is an economic partner, France has long-standing cultural ties to India, and the Finns might enjoy the weather

Globally, the most disliked countries are Iran, the U.S. and Russia. The African countries polled and some where the U.S. assisted against political repression (Poland, Afghanistan) are the most appreciative of the U.S.

Style Station points out that the sample sizes (and, for that matter, the methodologies) vary widely across countries, so take the poll with a grain of salt. Continue reading →

Desperate to lock up oil supplies and fresh off a smarting Central Asian oil field loss to China, India has signed a deal with Saudi Arabia:

India and Saudi Arabia have signed a deal to develop a strategic energy partnership and have agreed to “fight the menace of terrorism” together… The deal promises to provide India with a “reliable, stable and increased volume” of crude oil supplies…

Saudi Arabia currently supplies nearly 175 million barrels of crude oil a year – a quarter of India’s oil needs. India imports 70% of its supplies and is currently exploring fresh supplies from Central Asia to South America. [Link]

Meanwhile, the Saudi government continues to fund madrassas in Pakistan which churn out militants for Al-Qaeda and Kashmir:

Since the1980s, Pakistan’s education ministry has depended solely on the tuition-free madrassa system of religious education, funded by Saudi Arabia and other orthodox Sunnis, to see a large number of poor Pakistani children get to school. The theocratic education of Pakistan’s orthodox madrassas was tailored to produce the leaders of the Taliban movement. The madrassas also produced the Sunni militants and others who protected the anti-American Taliban and al-Qaeda militants… [Asia Times – author also writes for Indian defense publications]

Zahidullah, 31, a grad student in Islamic law at the Bahrul Uloom madrassa in Pakistan’s northern mountains, boasts of how many recruits he has gained for the outlawed Kashmiri guerrilla force Harkatul Mujahedin: “Many youths here are anxious to join the jihad when I tell them stories of our heroic Islamic resistance against Indian aggression…”

In recent months, thousands of young Afghan men have swarmed to madrassas just inside Pakistan… On the Afghan side, meanwhile, the influx of madrassa students and graduates has helped to produce Taliban battle units as large as 100 fighters, where a year ago the guerrillas were mustering squads of barely a half-dozen men. [Link]

The madrassas are popular because the military-controlled government spends far more on bombs than brains:

… Pakistan desperately needs its madrassas. Without them, an estimated 1.5 million young Pakistanis would get no formal education at all. According to a recent analysis by the U.S. Agency for International Development, Pakistan spends only 2.2 percent of its GDP on public education, the tiniest share for any country in South or Southeast Asia. [Link]