Why India has a 'sliver of time' to seize its chances

Is time running out for India? It's a rather dire question to ask a historian, but Sunil Khilnani believes that a young, aspirational country like India in a fast-changing world "will have only a sliver of time, a matter of years, in which to seize its chances". "After all, the faster history moves, the more likely is one to get left behind," he writes in an updated edition of his influential book, The Idea of India. "I do worry. The urgent and immense problems that India faces, make one realise that it has a narrow moment of time and opportunity," Prof Khilnani, author, most recently of Incarnations, which tells the story of the country through 50 remarkable lives over a period of 2,500 years and is the subject of a new BBC Radio 4 series, tells me. Read more