There were many smiling Indian faces last week. Our economy again beat forecasts and grew 8.9% in the April-June quarter. India's economic rise bewilders Indians. No one quite understands why this noisy and chaotic democracy of a billion people has become one of the world's fastest growing economies. This is the fourth year we are looking at around 8% growth, and this follows 22 years of very respectable 6% annual growth. With 25 years of high growth per capita income gains have been huge: from $1,178 in 1980 to $3,051 in 2005 (in ppp).

One ought to read a great book twice, at least. When I first read Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace I was too young. I was only interested in the plot and the relationships between Natasha, Andrei, and Pierre. When I read it again in my forties, I was deeply moved by its moral concerns. I realised that the novel is really about the way we deceive ourselves, how we are false to others, how we oppress fellow human beings, and how we're deeply unjust in our day to day lives. Most of this moral blindness seems man-made and avoidable. It makes one wonder if this is an intractable human condition, or can we change it?

There is a green playing field near my house where children can usually be found playing cricket. Over the past two months, however, they have quietly switched to football. Since I love football, I stop and linger and watch, hoping to see someone score a goal. But my neighbour says he misses the cricket, and blames this change on “insidious globalization”. He is referring, of course, to last month's World Cup, which should have been a dazzling climax to Zinedine Zidane's glorious career, but instead it left the memory of an angry moment and exposed the tragic flaw in a hero who carried the burden of a divided nation on his shoulders. Like a tragic hero, he went not to his coronation but to his disgrace.

Curse of seniority

Two weeks ago I was invited to a glamorous event in Manhattan celebrating the launch of a special issue of the prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine titled The Rise of India to which I had also contributed. A knowledgeable and well heeled audience heard our moderator begin with Jim Rogers' famous line that he wouldn't invest in India because “it had the worst bureaucracy in the world”. An odd note to begin an event honouring India's rise! It soon became apparent, however, that we must be celebrating the rise of a “private” India. A worrisome question hung over the whole evening--is India rising economically despite the state?