In his book Inside Out: India and China, Local Politics Go Global, the Brookings Institution scholar William Antholis explicitly differentiates India’s “forward states” (including Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu), “backward states,” and “swing states.”

The time has come for India to make a fundamental decision about its branding architecture: Will it be a “branded house” or a “house of brands”? Or will it try to be a bit of both? A branded house refers to large, multiproduct companies that brand every product with the same parent company name. For example, Apple is a branded house. Everything the

Tourism receipts leaped to $18 billion in 2012, up from $3.5 billion in 2003 (catapulting India to sixteenth place globally, up from thirty-eighth). Foreign tourists have risen to 6.3 million in 2011, up from 2.7 million in 2003 (moving India to thirty-eighth place, up from fifty-third).

Sprawling India drew fewer foreign tourists than tiny Singapore. Travelers in key target markets in Western Europe saw India as destitute, dirty, and dangerous.

In Following the Equator, the popular travelogue Twain published after his return, reflections on India spill across nearly half the book’s 712 pages.

History has shown that American actions can make a bad situation worse, and there is only limited evidence that they can make things fundamentally better.

Indians also need to recognize that their hopes and aspirations for the future are unlikely to materialize as long as a state of near war continues to plague relations with Pakistan.

As part of its asymmetric war against India in Kashmir, Pakistan continues to sponsor some of the world’s deadliest jihadist groups. Operations launched by organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of God)—including the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai—have pushed the two rivals close to outright war several times in just the last decade. If anything,

India and Pakistan began fighting for control over the former Himalayan kingdom of Kashmir within weeks of becoming independent nations. Both claim the entirety of the state, although India—which controls the most populated areas, including the lush Kashmir Valley—has shown willingness to accept the line dividing the two sides as a de facto border.