And so India is coming into its own. We are the new force. People around the world have begun to take notice. This too is new—no one elsewhere has been used to thinking of India as anything but a place of poverty, a victim of history and geography. But now they are looking at us with a little bit of confusion and wonder. What is this? A sixth of humanity on one big triangular patch of land, caught under the blazing sun, cut off by a mighty range of mountains: who are these people? A democracy, a polyglot coalition—wait, can it be? And what can it be? Do we make the Chinese, who so decisively
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