A friend sent me a column to read, and I should have posted it sooner, but I got waylaid by other things. It's a refreshing alternative to all the anxiety we feed ourselves concerning China: pay attention to India.

It's good to have a plan, I remind myself every Monday morning, but more often than not the plan goes out the window before my coffee gets cold. It seems more than likely that those inscrutable Chinese planners face the same dilemma. They're brilliant, and confounding to us, but they're human. And like all of us, I assume, they're vulnerable to the myth that we can control everything.

Meanwhile, those industrious engineers and technicians in the subcontinent have a lot going for them, too.