Twitterverse in splits over new Pakistan-China think tank

Islamabad, April 21
Pakistan and China on Saturday launched a new Joint Think Tank called Research and Development International, dedicated to work on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

But its official acronym, RANDI, has twitter users in India and Pakistan doubling up in laughter.

The name may seem harmless to Chinese readers or to the rest of the world, but readers in India and Pakistan are finding it to be a highly loaded word as it means "prostitute" in Hindi.

"The new think tank is the first joint initiative of China and Pakistan which will be dedicated to research on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor," said Senator Mushahid Hussain in Pakistan on Sunday

"Well, that's an unfortunate name for a think tank...," Fatima Bhutto, a well known Pakistani poet and writer, tweeted.

"It took joint Pak-Chinese imagination to produce this marvellous 5-letter disaster of Acronymological proportions," tweeted Shekhar Gupta a well known Indian journalist.

According to a press statement issued by the Islamabad office of the Pakistan China Institute, "Research and Development International(RANDI)" will have two co-chairpersons, Madame Zhao Baige, former minister and currently member of parliament and vice chairperson of foreign affairs committee of the National People's Congress and Senator Hussain.

On Tuesday, the twitter world was still reverberating with jokes based on the acronym