The Indian stock market shrugged off the deepening chaos in neighbouring Pakistan to reach yet new highs. There are many signs of a bubble: in Mumbai business news is stock market news and people who know little of business or markets boast of the gains they have made and those yet to come. Yet bubbles can continue until everyone who might be induced into the market has been: there are still many foreign investors who have not discovered India and a vast population of Indians who have not yet discovered financial speculation.

So the market may have some way to run, but sooner or later such bubbles burst and that will be the moment for questions about the nature and sustainability of Indian economic growth. Has it really moved permanently beyond the disappointing economic record of the four decades that followed independence?