At best, India could be where China is today in the next decade or so. And only if it continues growing at that pace can India become larger than Europe and America by the middle of the century. It is the hope of such progress that excites the world about India. But this prospect presupposes a kind of sustained growth that no country has ever managed, with a unique exception of China. Brazil underwent a brief high-growth phase of around 8 percent annually from the late 1960s to early 1970s. Similarly, Thailand became the world’s fastest-growing economy for the decade beginning from 1985 before it was interrupted by the Asian financial crisis. Only China managed to sustain such rates for much longer than a decade, but that is a model which cannot, and probably should not, be replicated.