India, an 'open, inclusive region'? Really?

Ask the Dalit tanner, the Muslim butcher, the Christian priest. Ask cattle traders of any religion. Ask a Muslim who falls in love with a Hindu or vice versa

Yesterday’s Nehru jacket wasn’t transformed into a fashionable designer garment when cut out of expensive weave instead of plain khadi and marketed as the Modi jacket.

Nor did P V Narasimha Rao’s “Look East” policy become passé just because the no-longer-so-new regime announced with fanfare that it would “Act East”. Indeed, apart from some high-powered personal publicity, Act East hasn’t realised the railway that was going to link Ho Chi Minh City with London via Delhi while the promised roads, pipelines and ports are still pies in the sky. Donald Trump’s “Indo-Pacific” is an inexpensive compliment to a country where Trump