Prahalad, who began his working life managing an Indian battery plant for Union Carbide, is best known as a highly influential thinker on corporate strategy, and has more recently turned his attention to ways to help poor people around the world.

CNN: The best business thinkers

India's central bank instructed the country's lenders to stop processing current-account transactions with Iran using the Asian Clearing Union, and told Indian firms they couldn't use the mechanism to pay for oil or gas imports.

WSJ: India, Iran Try New Conduit for Oil Payments

Union Carbide, which divested itself of its Indian subsidiary's stock in the 1990s, was acquired later by Dow Chemical, based in Midland, Mich.

WSJ: Dow Chemical's Olympic Ties Are Hit

Every year, 1.2m engineers and scientists graduate from Chinese and Indian universities, as many as in America, the European Union and Japan combined and three times the number ten years ago (see chart 7).

ECONOMIST: More pain than gain

New Delhi, India (CNN) -- Indian tennis player Sania Mirza and Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik exchanged wedding vows Monday in a controversy hit celebrity union across the deep political and religious rivalries that divide their two countries.

CNN: Pakistan's Malik weds India's tennis star Mirza

That dreadful prospect may yet be enough to forestall a war and persuade Indian and Pakistan to find better ways to tackle their differences - much as the United States and Soviet Union were forced to do in the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

BBC: Analysis: South Asia's nuclear brinksmanship