ARTICLE: "Economic Booms Fails to Generate Optimism in India: A cautious prime minister must bridge the rich-poor gulf," by Somini Sengupta, New York Times, 16 August 2007, p. A3.

China's pretty much exploring how fast you can go without the wheels coming off, whereas democratic India, subject to the caboose-braking of the rural poor in free elections, has to play it safer.

Thus, far more than state-authoritarian China, India remains the bellwether of the globalization ball--at once one of its most "shining" examples and an example of how many remain left behind.

India's president Singh puts it well: "India cannot become a nation with islands of high growth and vast areas untouched by development, where the benefits of growth accrue only to a few."

Six decades after independence, almost one-third of India lives below its self-declared poverty line.

The biggest trick lying ahead is likewise highly indicative of the challenge of shrinking the Gap in general: "how to industrialize and move people out of the lagging agricultural sector."

Hmm, bring on the Wal-Mart ...