The corporation is Reliance Industries of India, headed by the genial and highly astute Mukesh Ambani. Forbes placed him fourteenth richest in the world in its 2007 list. Ambani also has a very simple business model.

"We import $30 to $40 billion worth of oil including the bulk from the Gulf, refine it and export gasoline worth $80 billion to Europe and the United States,"”he told reporters in Dubai this week. His companies can refine 1.3 billion barrels a day, which together with his group's industrial and investing capabilities gives Reliance a strategic role in the region.

"India, China, and the Gulf are the future of business,"” Ambani continued, during his stay in Dubai. “That's why there is a shift among the Gulf's leadership to focus on India and China instead of Europe and the United States.” There are some 4 million Indians working in the Gulf states, sending home some $20 billion each year in remittances. India's own growth rates and its new defense modernization plan, with three new aircraft carriers planned and stealthy ‘"Scorpene"’ submarines on order from France means that the Indian Ocean will live up to its name and become India's lake, along with the approaches to the Gulf itself.

India, whose main security problem in recent years has been terrorist attacks from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, has long had a rather cool relationship with the Islamic world. It enjoys a close but discreet military relationship with Israel, buying its highly advanced new Phalcon AWACS aircraft from Israel along with radar and laser-aiming systems.

But India is now busily forging relationships with the Arab world. The visit last year of the Saudi monarch to New Delhi was striking, since the king overruled his advisers (who warned of Pakistani displeasure) to announce a ‘strategic partnership’ with India. Saudi capital was given the green light to invest in Indian infrastructure and refineries, and Indian capital was promised similar access to the Gulf.

At the same time, India is negotiating a pipeline deal to bring natural gas from Iran through Pakistan to India, in an arrangement which could be as important strategically for future relations with Pakistan as it will be important in terms of India's soaring energy needs.

The contours of global economic power are shifting, with India, China, and he Gulf states not only growing at dramatic speed but also investing among and between themselves. After years in which development theory focused on the North-South relationship in which the developing world depended on the rich Europeans and North Americans, this flurry of new South-South relationships points to the revolution that globalization has wrought.