According to Gustave de Beaumont, Alexis de Tocqueville’s sometime companion, the author of “Democracy in America” “had no memory for words nor for figures, but he possessed the strongest possible remembrance of ideas; when once grasped his mind retained them forever.” Writers on contemporary India would do well to follow the bent of the Frenchman’s mind. Too often, overwhelmed by the country’s riotous scale and diversity, they take the opposite line, with insight buried under soon-to-be-outdated statistics. A tablet-to-toilet ratio, placed in context, may tell us something of India’s curious modernity. Disjointed heaps...