"It does not have to be that way." Those eight words of a chorus line made memorable by John Edwards, the vice presidential running mate during John Kerry's unsuccessful American presidential bid in 2004, are applicable to the just concluded Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa summit in Goa. It was not that way, as Edwards would convincingly put it in a very different setting, that New Delhi conducted its neighbourhood diplomacy or, for that matter, dealt with Moscow 20 or 25 years ago when the diplomatic challenges that this country faced were no different from what Narendra Modi faces today. Read more