India

THERE ARE COUNTRIES where money must be paid to buy influence to get heard. It is dismaying that the U.S. is one of them. Governments of the poorest people think they need to pay high-priced public relations or law firms to make their case to the American people or government. Usually they could do it more persuasively themselves.The worst case would be a violation of law. Baltimore lawyer Lalit H. Gadhia, in pleading guilty to election fraud, admitted facts which suggest that someone in India's embassy thought the U.S. to be a most corrupt country.

The Rev. John F. Guidera, a Jesuit missionary who lived in India for six decades while retaining close ties with his Maryland benefactors, died of septicemia May 16 in Jamshedpur. He was 86. Born in Baltimore and raised in Govans, he was a 1943 Loyola High School graduate. He then entered the Jesuit seminary in Wernersville, Pa., and attended Weston College in Weston, Mass. "It was on a November evening in 1950 that the SS Chusan took him to Bombay harbor ... a young Jesuit far from his home in Baltimore, dispatched as a missionary to work for the rest of his life in the land of the poor, the leprotic, the dying and the hungry," a 1986 Evening Sun column said.

Baltimore money manager T. Rowe Price Group said Wednesday that it finished acquiring a 26 percent stake in India's oldest mutual-fund company, an effort to expand in a large and growing market. T. Rowe spent $142.4 million buying into UTI Asset Management Co. Ltd. Because of a change in exchange rates, that was about $4 million more than what T. Rowe estimated in November that it would pay. - Jamie Smith Hopkins

A shipment of Indian cumin seed contaminated with the larvae of a dead Khapra beetle, an invasive insect, never made it to McCormick & Co.'s Hunt Valley facility and was to be sent back to India, the spice maker said Tuesday. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists discovered the larvae and other seed contaminants during a search of the shipment at the port of Baltimore on April 17. The next day, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that the insect was a Khapra beetle, considered one of the most destructive pests, damaging grain, cereals and stored food.

McCormick & Co. Inc. said Wednesday it had entered into an agreement with a company in India to market and sell its basmati rice and other food products in the country. The Hunt Valley spicemaker expects to finalize the deal with Kohinoor Foods Ltd. later this year. McCormick said it will invest $115 and hold an 85 percent interest in the partnership. It will finance the deal through cash and debt. The joint venture will be named Kohinoor Specialty Foods India Private Ltd. Kohinoor sells its products in 350,000 retail stores in India and expects annual sales of $85 million this year.

The motive for terrorism in Tamil Nadu may stem from ethnic violence in Sri Lanka, a foreign country where Tamils are the minority and where Rajiv Gandhi sent Indian troops. It is not the basis of violence in Kashmir, where many seek independence; in Punjab, where Sikhs seek autonomy; or across the northern Hindi Belt, where parties are at each other's throats and tensions are fierce among Hindu castes and with Moslems.The bomb at Sriperumpudur in Tamil Nadu killed more than Rajiv Gandhi, aged 46, grandson of the nation's founder, son of its powerful leader, English-educated airline pilot with an Italian wife, the non-political son, accidental man of destiny, former prime minister and potential savior of the nation.

For America, India's moment has come. After decades of stubborn wallowing in postcolonial insularity and soft socialism, the world's largest democracy has been spawning deeper, more diverse ties to the world. Its economy has been booming, creating a large and aspiring middle class. Its millions of well-educated English speakers have been in high demand for their high-tech skills. Its trade with the United States has been growing by more than 20 percent a year. And today in New Delhi, President Bush begins a summit that could mark an important turning point in forging a stronger U.S.-India relationship as a counterweight to China's rising power and Pakistan's uncertain direction.

For doing the right thing, V. P. Singh's minority coalition government of India may fall in a vote of confidence on Wednesday. He is protecting the rights of minority Moslems against virulent fundamentalism within the Hindu majority. He is upholding not only the law but the secular vision -- so necessary to unite a huge population -- on which modern India was founded.By sending police to protect the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya and arresting a political ally to stop a march on it, Mr. Singh has taken on the Hindu nationalism that put him on top of a shaky coalition last December.

Durable, strong leadership is what India needs, but is not what India is getting. Circumstances and the Congress Party would not allow that.P. V. Narasimha Rao, who was named prime minister and given four weeks to form a government, is 69, recently had a heart bypass operation, did not seek re-election to Parliament and must do so soon, has been loyal the late Prime Ministers Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, lacks a power base in the nation or Congress Party and...

THE struggle for India goes on -- as it has almost without pause for 4,000 years.Time and again the struggle has changed the history of the world, causing great empires to rise and fall in Asia and Europe.And over the millennia it has touched the lives of billions of people everywhere -- particularly their minds and most deep beliefs.India is where Hinduism and Buddhism were born and the Sikh religion came to be, where Islam flourished, where Christianity established an Eastern outpost that became part of the growth of the West.

This week "The Amazing Race"is all about hardcore competition. You think it was hardcore before? Have you ever seen a contestant stare death in the face, debate death versus a million bucks, and choose death? That's what I'm talking about.   Remember last week in Africa when JJ took his ball and went home and now he's dead to me? He's still mad. He'll even recap why he's mad, and Art will join in so we know that both of them are equally idiotic. Let's just forget about it and move on to India.

The Baltimore region showed nearly double-digit growth in export goods and services in 2010, with room to grow, according to a study released Thursday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based public policy organization. The report, titled "Export Nation," reviewed data collected from the 100 largest U.S. metro areas. Baltimore was ranked 27th, with exports valued at $9.7 billion. U.S. exports, led by manufacturing, grew faster than at any time since 1997, said Emilia Istrate, the study's lead author.

The Rev. Joseph M. Kennedy, a Jesuit priest who taught in India for 30 years, died of heart failure Feb. 12 at the St. Claude la Colombiere Community, his order's Roland Park retirement home. He was 88. Born in Baltimore and raised in Chevy Chase, he was a Gonzaga College High School graduate who attended Georgetown University before entering the Society of Jesus in 1942. He studied at the old Woodstock College from 1946 to 1949. As a seminarian, he was granted permission to become an Indian missionary.

"Gas prices are outrageous. " Catherine Bell, a 66-year-old Social Security Administration retiree, was not happy Tuesday as she filled up her Chrysler at a Howard Street BP Amoco gas station in Baltimore. "You'll see when you get to retirement and you're on a fixed income. " The Baltimore resident reflects the feeling of a lot of Maryland motorists. Gasoline prices across the state and the nation are climbing fast, and motorists could see $4 a gallon at the pump in the coming months, fueled by demand in China and India and turmoil in the oil-rich Middle East, analysts say. The average price of regular unleaded gasoline in Maryland this month was $3.56 a gallon - nearly 20 cents more than in January and far above the $1.91 average in February three years ago. In Baltimore, the price averaged $3.59 last week, 50 cents more than a year ago, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic.

The dish: Paratha ($8) The Verandah, one of the many little shops along The Avenue in Hampden, serves three styles of parathas — essentially Indian stuffed flatbread. There's a ground turkey filling for the meat eater, a vegan job with avocado, potato and peas, and the vegetarian number with paneer and peas. I chose the paneer, mostly because I wanted to see how the Asian cheese worked in a pocket sandwich. The surface of Verandah's parathas have that marvelous mottled tandoori effect: patches of blackened, toasted and pale flour.

Gov. Martin O'Malley departed Friday night on a trade mission to India — the first by a Maryland governor to the world's second-most-populous nation — with a stop along the way in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. The governor is heading a delegation of more than 100 state officials, business leaders and educators on a trip that will include stops in Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi. On the way, the governor will stop in Doha, Qatar, where he is scheduled to discuss investment opportunities.

Painter Lois Borgenicht made a recent trip to India, and the results for her art can be seen in her current show at Resurgam. In oils and pastels, her still lifes reflect the images, the patterns and the light she encountered. But there are other influences reflected in these creations as well. Some of the objects and figures recall the studio of her stepfather, the painter Warren Brandt. Borgenicht, who studied at the Boston University School of Fine Art, has recently shown work at the Trenton City Museum and will be shown in a coming exhibit at Government House in Annapolis.

NEW DELHI - As Indian and Pakistani soldiers trade heavy artillery fire along the Line of Control dividing disputed Kashmir, an open military confrontation between the two nuclear rivals appears likely unless the United States is able to compel Pakistan to crack down on terror groups tied to its intelligence service. The United States' critical role is reinforced by its military presence in Pakistan and by its warming relations with India. If India were to militarily retaliate against Pakistan for its continuing proxy war through surrogate terror groups, it will put the United States in an anomalous position of having to insulate its forces in Pakistan from the fighting and balance its ties with both rivals.

Gov. Martin O'Malley is planning to lead a trade mission to India, he said Tuesday, in what would be his second international trip this year. O'Malley said the purpose of the trip is jobs and that he hopes to go "before the year's end. " "We're working on it," O'Malley said. "We promote the competitive strengths of Maryland. " He listed life sciences, biotech, information technology and health care as those strengths. India is Maryland's 12th-largest trading partner, and the state is host to branch offices for five Indian companies, according to the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development.

American quilts have been spiced with Indian influences in the exhibit "Pieces as Prayers: Kolam and Kaleidoscope Quilts" at the Tai Sophia Institute's Himmelfarb Gallery. Gaithersburg artist Lauren Kingsland' s quilts reflect Hindu religious practices she saw during a trip to India. The daily religious ritual that impressed her involved Indian women making designs with rice flour on the ground. This ritual is a manifestation of a belief known as Kolam, which states that making the design is itself a form of prayer.