At the start of 2016, the numbers suggest it really is the turn of the Indian tortoise to race ahead. With annual gross domestic product growth of 7.4 per cent in the third quarter, India is expanding faster than China or any large economy and is sparkling when compared with recession-hit emerging markets such as Brazil.

TN Ninan is, however, more of a stolid realist than a nationalistic cheerleader for India or for Narendra Modi, its prime minister.

Ninan, chairman and former editor of the Business Standard newspaper, implies in this survey of India’s economy since the 1991 reforms that its moment of glory comes almost by default. While others have fallen by the wayside, India plods and stumbles onwards, propelled by the sheer size of a domestic market of 1.3bn people and the need to catch up with nimbler rivals. “India is the world’s last great business frontier,” he writes.