Zero-sum world: The biggest threats to the world and to the Indian growth miracle

Age of Anxiety

The world is turning into a grimmer place.

The US economy, still the world's most powerful, continued to wobble in 2010. Over a million homes were foreclosed and over 150 banks  shut down (the most in a year in two decades). Even the proposed infusion of $600 billion (QE2, as it is called) shows little sign of doing any good there in the year ahead.

In Europe, a sovereign debt crisis is threatening the very foundations of the European Union. Too much indeed rides on the fate of the economies of Ireland and the PIGS (acronym for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, among the worst-affected economies there).

In our neighbourhood too, the storm clouds have continued to gather.

Pakistan remains a huge worry, the worst floods in its history doing little to alleviate concerns that it could soon turn into a failed state. An increasingly confident and assertive China, for its part, is also triggering its own waves of worries.

Sadly for us all, such concerns aren't going to vaporise anytime soon in this the 'Age of Anxiety', says Gideon Rachman in a new book Zero-sum world: Politics, power and prosperity after the crash.

The crash in the title is the global economic crash of 2008, which led to the Great Recession. It ended the 'Age of Optimism' that began following the crushing victory for the forces of democracy in the 1991 Gulf war, according to Rachman.

In an interview with R Rajesh Kumar, the Financial Times' Chief Foreign Affairs commentator sheds light on the financial and political uncertainties that could plague the world and India, and on why he wrote the book.