Harish Palaniappan's

India has probably moved into the Limelight of developing nations.. There are a lot of foreign governments interested in India today.

> French president visited recently and signed agreements on trade links and bilateral co-operation.
> US president is in the country for discussions on Nuclear proliferation, trade links and bilateral co-operation.
> Australian Prime Minister is coming on March 6th, for renewing and taking bilateral and trade links to a higher level.

Also,
The President of India and Prime Minister of India have been visiting countries more often these days,
> recently APJ Abdul kalam visited Phillipines, Singapore and Republic of Korea,
> while Manmohan Singh visited KaulaLumpur, Malaysia.

Trade links and co-operation between India and many other countries seem to become overwhelming.

Similarly Educational co-operation has also started gaining more importance, thanks to the President Abdul Kalam's efforts..he always talks on educational links.
> recently we heard of more exchange programmes like teacher exchange, student exchange numbers increasing.
> Singapore invited IIM to propose on setting up a institute there, for which IIM is trying to convince the governments stand of firstly developing education levels internally. Argument is, if singapore allows us establish there why not use it, take home some money for paying development costs here.

All this point to two things...
One obvious thing.. India is becoming hot, and value of Indian skills are gaining recognition, thanks to software market for proving us smart.

The other important reason... India's foreign policy change probably has did magic.

We internally argue in India about voting against Iran for IAEA, trying listening to the US on bringing changes in handling of our Nuclear facilities, and all that, but... change in stance is what has worked magic and got many countries interested in seeing India as partner in growth.

Probably, foreign minds had the following worries about India that,
We are a self-sustaining and hence may not be co-operative,
We build our own technology, be it satellites, or nuclear power, and probably we might not have enough mindset to work with others, and the likes.

Probably, our new foreign policies are working good to answer these worries and so the magic.

Related Websites:
Ministry of External Affairs, India
Embassy of India, Washington DC

Learnings:
> Probably when we over-used 'Made in India', or said 'Indigenously developed car in India or Wholly Indian Car', someone at a foreign office thought Indians are conservative, they don't like working with others on technology co-operation.

> Also, in recent times, we have stopped the fuss about being 'Swadeshi', using all Indian products.

> When we protest foreign products in the country calling it outright sale of India by politicians, and saying that its blocking growth of indian companies and all that, we are limiting India's capacity because of fears of competition.

> Allowing foreign products and investment in India, helps us understand how to get their class in our businesses and products, as we see them doing it in our country with our marketing and business problems.

> There are definitely times when you see a problem that all Indian companies had with a market, being solved by a foreign competitor, and all indian companies soon following the same solutions.