India's great economic boom, the arrival of the Internet and outsourcing, have broken the wall between provincial India and the world.

Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love - or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?

India's great economic boom, the arrival of the Internet and outsourcing, have broken the wall between provincial India and the world.

I had grown up in a privileged, upper-caste Hindu community; and because my father worked for a Catholic hospital, we lived in a prosperous Christian neighborhood.

Apparently, sir you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don’t have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, ‘’does’’ have entrepreneurs. Thousands and thousands of them. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs—"we" entrepreneurs—have set up all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now.

I am not an original thinker-but I am an original listener.)

Mangalore, the coastal Indian town where I lived until I was almost 16, is now a booming city of malls and call-centres. But, in the 1980s, it was a provincial town in a socialist country.