India is looking to adopt Latin America’s famous and popular conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs. But are they transferable to a country of 1.2 billion people, in which 363 million of them live below the poverty line, 260 million live in rural areas?
In a long rant about FIFA corruption, John Oliver uses as an example the white elephants created by the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. As he says—referring to the classic Joni Mitchell song, Brazil has literally “paved paradise to put up a parking lot.
Taking Cuba off the list has two main consequences, diplomatic and economic, said Christopher Sabatini, a Columbia University professor who specializes in Cuba studies. “This is something that for a long time sort of stuck in the craw of the Cubans, who really resented being lumped together with countries like Iran and Syria,” he said.
“The embargo has grown by accretion over the decades, one brick at a time,” said Christopher Sabatini, a scholar of U.S.-Cuba relations who teaches at Columbia University. “Dismantling it is going to happen similarly.”
While much of the media and policy attention has focused on China, Russia and Iran’s involvement in the region—often with handwringing or finger pointing—India has become a player in its own right. Unlike China, the South Asian giant’s economic interests and practices in the region are more compatible to Latin American economies and development.
