Woh hot potato topic, I'll add my two cents of what I know about the Philippines having been there a couple of times.
Philippines is sort of a strange country, though they have much natural resources their country is not in an excellent shape given the poor political control they can't utilize it effectively and as a result their population suffers as a whole.
They have a good call center industry but their primary export I believe is mostly with regards to domestic help and of late skilled labor which we in Singapore are seeing a rising trend of. A family friend of mine goes regularly to Cebu to source for domestic workers and the poverty is really really bad.
IMO I believe this deal is good for India and the Philippines because the country does need a bigger nation to work with to get its act together, also since Filipinos and India share a outsourcing culture and both countries speak English it does form a comfortable fit. However because of the messy politics and corruption in the Philippines one cannot say how long this will last though it will be good if someone help sort their sh*t out.
Outside of politics the local Filipinos actually get a lot of soft influence from the Chinese, Koreans & Japanese culture (not India thought from observation). If you go around the region you will see many of the boats owned by Korean and Japanese businesses but run by locals as a joint co-op. Taiwanese being so close have been doing business in the region for decades and the lastly many of the Filipino help engaged by HK, Singapore, Taiwan and lately China I hear have been exposed to Chinese cultures for years and they bring that back to their home countries. For example my own Filipino help makes really good Chinese dishes I can only she can open a really good Chinese restaurant when she finally goes home.
So politically India is getting headway but the Chinese culture is already ingrained in their local culture, time will only tell where this will take us.
