Johnathan,

America's poorest state, Mississippi, has better state roads and a better infrastructure than all of India.

I would be more upbeat about India's future if they showed any sign of an ability to create a decent infrastructure. When we were in Bangalore a couple of years ago, daily power failures were a feature of life -- every office building in the city has a backup genny for their computer systems but not for the lights -- and there are no signs that this has improved. If anything, the situation has deteriorated as more and more technology companies flock to Bangalore.

The roads and streets were appalling, not just in the city, but (especially) in the country. The main road between Bangalore and Mysore, for example, is in worse shape, and can handle less traffic, than the average county road in Texas. (When a highway has speedbumps (!!!!!!) inside the various towns' limits, by the way, instead of having circle roads which bypass towns, then you know the thinking is backward.)

And when it comes to "economic zones" (where industry and businesses get favorable treatment in exchange for development), the Chinese have the Indians beaten by twenty lengths, as the Indians themselves admit.

Oh, and you STILL can't drink tapwater in India without serious risk of disease. Good grief: you can't even drink the tap water in Bangalore's 5-star Leela Palace Hotel.

Maybe when the Indians have improved all that, we can talk about their "bright" future. So far, however, there has been little or no progress.

I am a fairly regular watcher of Indian English languge television (NDTV) and they a good (ish) source for Indian matters - the good and the bad.

For example, India is engaged in a war (and it is a war - it cuts accross many Indian States and people die every day, even the Indian Air Force is now involved) against the Chinese backed Maoists (China may not practice Maoism at home any more - but it arms and trains terrorists who want to).

None of this is mentioned in the Western media (although the Western media does cover India's other war - the war against the Islamists). And it is one reason (among others) why India may be a more dangerious place to invest in than Mississipi.

The Indians themselves invest in gold - and in this (as in many things) they are wise, for the government deficit (whilst only half the obcene level of deficit in the United States) is a serious problem - and that deficit (if it carries on) will bring down the private economy over time.

Also the Congress party promises to build a Welfare State in India - an insane idea, but one that has already had some action taken in its direction.

I hope profoundly that India does not go down that path - and the Common Sense of many Indians does mean that perhaps J.P. is correct (perhaps they will avoid this insanity).

By the way - I did enjoy the swipe at the Economist.

India can never be a new society in the sense that many East Asian societies are (for example Korea has a history going back thousands of years - but South Korea is a new society in many ways, no offence meant to South Korea actually I admire this nation a great deal).

Indian tradition in things like the family and religion is very strong indeed - much stronger than social liberals like the Economist writers can understand (it is rather too deep for people who think that a few years repeating whatever their lecturers said at university is a fit training for understanding everything under the sun).

I would not pretend to understand India - it is too big and too diverse. Too full of bad (such a communal riots) and good (such as family structures that actually support the members of the family - and produce the next generation), but it is an elephant.

And elephants are stronger than tigers - and are stronger than the dying West.

As mentioned above - in India most (although not all) families still support their members (both physically and spiritually) and produce the next generation.

How many Western nations can say that?

I doubt that this can even any longer be said of the United States - where Civil Society (the ture "Elephant" whether it is truly represented by the Republican party or not) has been in decline since at least the 1960's.

It is not just that government is too big (to great a burden) Progressive government has poisoned Civil Society in the West in a way that it has not in India (in India Civil Society, both bad and good, has proved to be too strong for the government to poison).

That is a more important poisoning than unsafe tap water.

One small point.

Under Indian law it is difficult for someone to earn a living as an official of a charity (charitable foundation).

Indian law assumes that money given to charity goes to just that (the purpose of the charity) not to pay and perks of people working for the charity.

Someone who set up an free market foundation in India complained about the above - and I agree that it was a bad thing in the case of this free market foundation.

However, he failed to understand the vast class of leftists that "charitable foundations" pay in the West - Comrade Barack Obama is just one of a Legion of them.