Letters from Indian soldiers in Europe to their families back home bespeak cultural dislocation and tragedy. The shells are pouring like rain in the monsoon, declared one.

For example, the Arab Summit in Tunis produced a vision of, in fact a plan for, modernization and development in the Arab world that placed the latter in its true context, whereas initiatives that have come to us from overseas may have spoken of reform programmes, but they have been flawed in their strategic vision, and their underlying premises bespeak motives relating primarily to security, not to the building of societies.