Any primer on business etiquette in India needs a chapter on caste. In a country with a complex social system based on vertically-ordered castes, status-consciousness is particularly acute. The caste system is a “way of measuring others, and of being measured according to one’s own status in a hierarchy”, according to Stephen P Cohen, a leading South Asia scholar at the Brookings Institution in the US. “This may help explain why Indian leaders, still drawn largely from the upper castes, are extraordinarily sensitive to the tiniest perceived slight to themselves, or their country, by foreigners.”

Termed the “Great Wall of India” by the theorist Charles Drekmeier, caste is a social construct rooted in endogamy. It defines the group of people from which parents seek marriage partners for their children. There are tens of thousands of castes, often loosely based on occupational specialisations. Although the system is fluid and adaptive, it is still important to be sensitive to the fact that, for many Indians, particularly in northern rural areas, caste will play a key role in determining their choice of marriage partner, their livelihood and even the political party for which they vote in elections.