Not so long ago, remembers Kamal Nath, India’s commerce minister, the Indian delegates attending this week’s meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos would all have been armed with “The List”. Foreign travel was a privilege and family and friends would compile long lists of luxuries unavailable at home.

“Toblerone and Vat 69, Old Spice and Brut and other famous brands of the 1960s and 1970s would burst out of our bags,” he said at a luxury goods conference in Mumbai this month. “Even in the 1980s, brands forgotten abroad continued to be coveted in an India that was living several brand cycles back in time.”