In many countries, it is the affluent who vote and the poor who don’t. India does the reverse. And so, in a country with an urban middle class in the tens of millions, few politicians reflect their values or even their styles of dress and speech. To watch Parliament on television is to witness a scene more evocative of a rural vegetable market than of a life in a modest office in Delhi or Mumbai…

The Mumbai attacks could – just could – interrupt that pattern. It seems that, when their own five-star hotels were struck, the elite quickly realized that, when you pay no attention to public life, you get what you pay for.