We’re poor. We’re illiterate. We’re still traditional. Too many religions, too many languages, too many ethnicities.  What do we have that the extremists repeatedly make us the target of their terrorism?  

Those very things — poverty, illiteracy, tradition, multiple religions, ethnicities and languages. Not because they are a fertile breeding ground for radical recruits but because India is finding workable, affordable and replicable solutions which will help it overcome the same problems. Those solutions are being emulated by emerging societies across the world, giving them hope for their own futures. That is why India’s unexpected rise is threatening to those forces that work in the darkness of despair.  

Socially, politically and economically, India sits between two extremes: the West and China. The models of the western world are too developed to be easily adapted — 50 years of aid has not been effective. China is autocratic, its top-down growth delivered by an appointed, disciplined elite to an obedient population. Neither condition is universal. India’s is. “India is, in a sense, the crucible of the world,” says Prableen Sabhaney of Fabindia. Under the umbrella of India, in varying stages of development, is the rest of the world — south Asia, where it is the mother culture, but also Africa, some nations of the Middle East, south and central America, central and south east Asia. These are regions rich in assets, and human capital with the potential and now the desire, to develop. They all think: If India can do it, so can they. 

... contd.