How the world observes India and Pakistan.

Once again, India and Pakistan, the sister states carved more than 75 years ago by the British out of their large South Asian colony, are in the news in the West. India is being widely written about as the world's most populous country and its largest democracy. In terms of the size of its population, it overtook China in the beginning weeks of 2023 and while the size of the Chinese population has begun to decline, that of India would continue to grow. India has both very rich and very poor people with a large middle class that is growing in size and spends a great deal on goods that are beyond the reach of the poor. This growing demand is attracting foreign firms to start production and distribution in the country.

India is now the world's fifth-largest economy. Its expansion is being encouraged by the government which has pulled back from several parts of the economy, leaving space into which private entrepreneurs have moved. Among those who have contributed to the growing economy is Gautam Adani, an industrialist who has built a large industrial empire that uses coal as a source of energy.

The economic and financial rise of Gautam Adani, from the Indian state of Gujrat which is also the home state of Narendra Modi, the country's prime minister, has begun to attract attention from the Western media. In mid-January 2023, Hindenburg Research, a short-seller firm based in New York, published a lengthy report that accused Adani of, among other things, artificially boosting the company's shares over several decades by using a network of overseas shell companies linked to his relatives. The report said that the Adani companies were seriously overvalued, perhaps by as much as 80%. The Hindenburg report was picked up by a number of newspapers including the Washington Post which reported that the Adani group's holding company's shares fell by more than 18%, while several of its subsidiaries also suffered severe losses. According to Bloomberg News, publicly traded Adani companies lost roughly a combined $50 billion in market capitalization by the end of January 27. Adani Enterprises' difficulties had consequences for other sectors of the Indian economy. For instance, public and private sector banks held a total of about 40 % of the Adani Group's debt which led to a fall of 2.5% in their capitalization on one day, January 27.

Pakistan is also being noticed by the Western Press. While most of the reporting on India is positive much of what is being...