A platform offered one of Rajan’s oldest buyers the same cloth for twelve per cent less, with an insurer behind the promise. What Rajan had left was not a moat. It was a man who phones first, and nobody owes him the order.

Kauṭilya said no official can handle public money without tasting it. India's older texts give hard tests for what India still gets wrong: borrowing, freebies, a narrow tax base and prisons full of people awaiting trial.

India should not obey its ancient texts or ignore them. They cannot set a carbon price or run a central bank, but they give principles, questions and warnings, and their own teachers told students to keep the good and drop the rest.