Wriiting from London, Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha
Dalmia notes in her morning column at The Daily that a
deep gloom has set in Europe that its glory days are over. Private
bank excesses and public-sector legacy costs are poised to drag the
continent — and America — down for generations. Only India and
China are seen as the rising stars in the global firmament. Their
young economies have stalled this year. But they are expected to
recover, learn from the West’s mistakes and become economic
powerhouses, displacing the West’s global hegemony.

But Dalmia notes that India isn’t going to perch its tricolored
flag atop the globe anytime soon for one big reason. “The world’s
largest democracy doesn’t have rule of law,” she says, “it has the
rule of babus, the local term for petty bureaucrats. And so long as
they keep challenging India’s entrepreneurs, there isn’t much
chance that India will challenge the West.”

She describes her own traumatic encounter with the Babu Kings
whose bizarre ways turned a simple travel request into a
nightmare.

Read the whole thing
here.