Yet Thatcher changed the world. In the 1970s, a decade made difficult by the stagnation of the West's industrial complex wrought by the oil price crises, the social-democratic consensus that had dominated Europe and even America was beginning to disintegrate. Even more so than Ronald Reagan in the United States, Thatcher viewed no part of the post-War socialist superstructure as sacrosanct. Everything - internationalism, Europhilia, industrial policy, workers' rights, public utilities - would go, she insisted. And everything did. The Britain she left behind was a sleeker, more efficient country than the strike-ridden and shabby United Kingdom of the 1970s. No subsequent British prime minister - not even Tony Blair - has stepped truly outside her vision. For that matter, the right all over Europe looked to her fiscal conservatism and nationalism as a model; and, when the former Eastern bloc joined the European Union, many of the ex-Communist countries were led by self-declared Thatcherites, who had grown as anti-Communists by admiring Thatcher. She moved the political median to the right not only in Britain, but in Europe and across the world, and her conspicuous success in reviving Britain from the same Fabian socialist quagmire in which India spent decades was not overlooked here.
Of course, her mistakes were perhaps as vast as her successes. Britain's over-expensive and low-quality railways today are a visible symbol of the dangers of poorly managed privatisation. And the Thatcherite belief that finance and other service sectors would seamlessly replace the industrial base she wilfully decimated lies exposed today as the rank folly it was. Britain is more unequal, more racially divided, and less cohesive than it was before Margaret Thatcher.
In many ways, India is the country most ripe for a Thatcherite moment, with all its benefits and dangers. Her political brilliance was to recognise that liberal economics could have a political constituency if sold well. India's existing politicians have signally failed to deliver on creating a political movement out of reform - laying themselves open to an insurgent outsider, like Maggie Thatcher the grocer's daughter. It would be wise for India's political class to closely examine Thatcher's career and her successes - as also her failures.