Challenges of India 1.Left wing maoist insurgency 2. recessive but ever present right wing religious fundamentals-BJP, RSS.

3. corruption of democratic centre and conversion of political parties into fami ly firms 4. degradation of public firms 5. growing gap between rich and poor 6. rapid pace of environmental degradation 7. apathy of media 8. political defragmentation and policy incoherence 9. unrecoiled border lands 10. extremely unstable neighborhood 11. high inflation What a difference a year makes: As the global crisis unfolded in 2008, many in I ndia argued that the economy was safely 'decoupled' from global trends because I ndia didn't depend heavily on foreign demand for exports--and because its relati vely closed financial sector had little exposure to toxic assets. And yet India was hurt by the crisis: Exports collapsed, capital left the country, and corpora te India lost access to many sources of overseas financing. The government adopt ed a fiscal stimulus in December 2008 that included heavy capital and infrastruc ture spending. Still, Indian growth slowed from 9% in 2007-08 to 6.7% in 2008-09 . And no wonder: Inflation isn't just an economic issue in India; it's politicall y explosive because it touches consumer prices, particularly the prices of foods tuffs, oils, and cooking fuels, in a country with a large population of poor vot ers. And inflation is a growing challenge; inflation figures are now over 10% an d food inflation is higher still. And there are challenges aplenty alongside inflation, including India's large f iscal deficit, which the government now seeks to address through share sales in state-owned enterprises, telecom spectrum auctions, and other revenue raisers. A new 'multidimensional poverty index,' developed at Oxford and soon-to-be-used by the UN's Human Development Report, put 410 million Indians in poverty. This m eans there are more poor people in eight Indian states than in all of sub-Sahara n Africa--26 countries combined. As one news story in the Guardian put it, the i ndex 'reinforce[s] claims that distribution of the wealth generated by India's r apid economic growth...is deeply unequal.' Will India's choices facilitate an economically open, globally integrated India ? Will they shrink its wealth divide, expand its middle class, and strengthen it s physical infrastructure? And at the end of the day, can India's economy provid e a foundation for strategic clout? More than a decade of rapid growth has made India a major world economy, on trac k, according to Goldman Sachs ( GS - news - people ) and others, to be a top-fiv e global economy by 2030. But it is really the next round of economic choices th at will involve the most consequential factors shaping India's rise India s policy should be grounded in present concerns as well as historical dialec tics; a patchwork combining the legacy of an ancient civilization, security impe ratives of the Raj and its importance as a cultural and commercial crossroad. Naming no names, we are quite much aware of what dangers and from who hover over India at the present. The Kashmir issue further aggravates all. But that s not th e end of it. There are 410 million people waiting to be drawn out of poverty, an d the rising inflation, the environmental degradation and corruption are just ad ded miseries to the fate of the aspiring global superpower. The future of India might be an obsolete concept now, and we might have begun seeing that the future is India,

The terrorist attacks occurring more regularly than ever, the trouble of politic al defragmentation and policy incoherence, the unreconciled border lands, and ex tremely unstable neighborhoods provide enough a clue towards what India is headi ng to. It is open for the world to see, and us to live. We might have earned our selves the crown of software giants , and found India standing at the fourth econom ically, but the fact that we really have vouchsafed ourselves a safe future ling ers in sheer doubt. Really, can we sleep free and hope to wake up finding the wa ter coming from the Brahmaputra as usual? Actually not. We do not know what othe r nations are preparing to do in the near future, and also not how the next comb at, if any, might alter the political map of the world. All we know is that we c an either learn the way the real politik works or let the world gnaw at us.