India's Growth Paradox

A former president of New Delhi's Foreign Correspondents' Club liked to startle newly arrived American and British journalists by telling them to begin work on their big India book at once. If they protested that they had just landed and would need at least a year to write a book, he insisted that they had got it exactly wrong. "The first day in India," he would say, "every foreigner is convinced he can write a book about it. After a year of living here, he realizes he can't write a meaningful sentence about it."

Fortunately, Edward Luce was...