Lately India has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Its once tigerish economy is growing at its slowest rate in more than a decade. Newspapers are filled with ever more depressing stories of rape, official plunder and gut-wrenching poverty. To an outsider the headlines can seem surreal: Last week the Cabinet actually voted to allow convicted criminals to serve in Parliament and state legislatures, before being forced to back down.
Indians — who know that almost a third of the members of the lower house of Parliament face criminal charges — can be jaded about such things. But this kind of official brazenness can hardly inspire confidence in companies looking to invest in India, which has long touted the rule of law as its one crucial advantage over China.
And what about affluent Indians, who unlike foreign companies have a big stake in their country and society? Can they really continue to ignore the chaos and dysfunction that surrounds them, the broken infrastructure and equally threadbare laws? Can they thrive indefinitely in a country where most people exist on less than $2 a day, where half the homes lack toilets and three-quarters of the population doesn't have access to safe drinking water?