As I worked the international seminar circuit in recent weeks travelling from Beijing to Washington and from Tokyo to Berlin to New York, there was one running headline and a big new idea.

The running headline was about Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian steel magnate who would not give up on his ambition to acquire the Arcelor steel company in Luxembourg. Refusing to be cowed down by either the European condescension and protectionism, Mittal gets what he wants. He is the new face of India’s business, relentlessly leveraging the dynamics of globalisation.

The big new idea on the other hand was about rising India and how it might change the world. In Tokyo and Berlin the talk was all about how India would fit into the Asian and global balance of power.

As it confronts a rising China in its neighbourhood, Japan is newly interested in India and its role in constructing a stable political equilibrium in Asia. In Berlin, despite the rampant football fever, there were enough intellectuals interested in the impact of India on the structure of the international system.

In Beijing at the very heart of the communist citadel, the Central Party School, the focus was on what China could learn from India in managing increasingly complex domestic politics. Notwithstanding the protests of the Indian participants, who insisted that it is India that must learn from China, the Chinese academics were determined to explore what the Indian political model meant for the future of China.

In New York, the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations had an event to mark the new issue of Foreign Affairs devoted to the “rise of India”. There was a room full New Yorkers wanting to know the meaning of India’s emergence as a great power.

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