“The entire hullabaloo around MS Dhoni’s captaincy is extremely ill-timed. Captain-bashing is a favourite pastime of cricket pundits in the Indian sub-continent and the media just loves it,” wrote Akram in his column for a sports website.

Rushdie was set to address the Jaipur Literature Festival in the western Indian state of Rajasthan on Tuesday, but some Muslim groups opposed the speech.

The working mechanism, mooted by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, was finalised at the conclusion of the 15th meeting of the Special Representatives (SR) on the boundary question — National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon and Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo here.

“It’s not bad for an Indian wine, is it?” mused Ms. Tandon, holding her glass up toward the light.

“Indian! Indian! Is this Indian?” gasped Mr. Tandon.

Why yes – his glass of red was Indian, from Fratelli Wines, the rising star in India’s wine scene. The Tandons had come to the Delhi Golf Club, a bastion of the city’s moneyed elite, for a wine-tasting event, part of a dogged effort by its nascent wine industry to woo over a nation of spirits drinkers – or at least the growing market segment with a taste for Western ways and rupees to spend on luxuries.

Mr. Tandon collects whiskies – but he worked abroad for years and appreciates wine as well, so he might have seemed like an easy sell. But he refused to believe that a wine he enjoyed could be Indian.

Gagan Sharma, the evening’s sommelier, listened to him with a sort of resigned dismay. This image problem dogs India’s wines, both abroad – where Indian wine is viewed as a novelty but not something one would actually want to drink – and domestically, where the tiny pool of wine lovers are sure that imported must be better.

Indian wine, the globally minded oenophile will recall, was supposed to be the big new thing a few years back. Beginning in 2001, Indian investors – many of them toting fortunes made abroad – snapped up land in the heart of Maharashtra and erected huge faux-Tuscan wineries. Their first vintages attracted a bit of international attention, while the vaunted Indian middle class was reported ready to end its love affair with spirits and embrace the grape. Wine, dusted in the cachet that anything foreign has here, was tipped as a new status symbol, and with 1.2 billion potential drinkers, India was meant to be a market just waiting to be uncorked.

Then came the autumn of 2008. The global economy went into a tailspin, and in India the chill was exacerbated by the attacks on Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists. In the mood of national anxiety, consumption of “lifestyle” items fell dramatically. Wine sales fell by half in 2009, and the domestic industry fizzled.

Three long years later, however, there are tentative signs that India’s wine industry is growing once again, and sommeliers and producers agree it is hardier for the harsh pruning it received. A handful of Indian wines have recently been recognized internationally in blind tastings. The British supermarket chain Waitrose now carries one, introducing the idea that India makes wine to a whole new swath of consumers.

At home, wine is slowly catching on. “The market is growing, but not by leaps and bounds like you heard in the hysteria a few years ago,” says Reva Singh, who publishes Sommelier India. (She founded the magazine in 2004, and for the first few years had to explain what “sommelier” meant in a small note in the masthead.) Wine sales are expected to grow by 25 per cent next year, according to the government wine promotion body.

But it’s slow going. “This country has five major religions and four of them forbid the consumption of alcohol,” says Mr. Sharma, who trains hotel and restaurant staff who have never tasted wine all about how to sell and serve it. There is nevertheless plenty of drinking – but here traditional village homebrew meets British colonial legacy. Indian drinkers usually opt for spirits, not wine, which is perceived as “weak” and unlikely to achieve what the drinker wants it to.

True to form, at the end of the golf club tasting the staff tidied up the wine glasses, the 70 participants settled back in their chairs – and nearly all of them ordered a whisky. “They always go back to what they know,” sighed Tarun Sibal, who heads marketing for Fratelli. Tastings, he explained, are a key part of his strategy. “We don’t make a soap, or a laptop, where we could just do an advertisement.” Individual drinkers, such as the skeptical Mr. Tandon, must be won over one by one.

The rupee dropped 35 paise to 53.29 against the US dollar in early trade on Tuesday after tumbling 81 paise the day before.

India’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal has asked representatives of Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Microsoft to screen and remove offensive user content and derogatory material. He said he has not met with any success and is accusing companies of not cooperating.

Beijing, Bangkok, Dubai and Lahore have them: Indian metropolises do not.

Instead, the affluent, urban shopper in the world’s fastest growing large economy after China is a forager for small luxuries and international comestibles among a multitude of corner shops and open vegetable markets.

In theory, that should all be about to change. A cabinet decision last week to allow greater foreign participation in retail by the likes of Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour would transform India’s scarcity economy, at least for a lucky few among its 1.2bn people.

That is if the Congress party led government does not cave in to dissent, even among its own allies, after signing off last week on the biggest economic reform for years.

The coming days are a test of premier Manmohan Singh’s resolve and his government’s unity. Its ministers and the country’s business leaders are doing their best to convince farmers and small businesses of the benefits. They also say the reform tame rising food prices.

India’s $450bn retail market should be one of the most attractive in the world and the liberalisation to allow foreign multi-brand retailers majority ownership of local operations is long overdue. Rajiv Kumar, the director-general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce, calls the local retail sector “backward” and one that lags behind the fast-paced growth of the rest of the economy.

One reason for the reform’s urgency is the failure of Indian groups to bring the big store format to their home market. Reliance, Bharti, Godrej and DLF, have had mixed success in their multi-brand retail ventures and have not made the required investment in badly needed supply chains, warehousing and refrigeration.

Foreign retailers may well scratch their heads as to why locals have made so little progress and wonder whether they can do any better in a forbidding environment.

The political storm is a potent reminder that bringing Indian retail into the 21st century will be no easy task. India’s nation of small shopkeepers, or kirana store owners, is a powerful political lobby. Combine that with fears of predatory foreign capital, a flood of low priced Chinese goods and a xenophobia, born of vested interests, and it’s no wonder the reform remains a hard one to push through.

Reliance Fresh, an indigenous supermarket chain, had to shut its doors in Uttar Pradesh after its stores were attacked four years ago.

Such entrenched opposition will mean that the orderly rollout of the box-store across India will simply not happen.

Organised foreign owned retail will be welcomed by only a handful of states. Three of the most likely are Delhi, Maharashtra and Punjab.

Foreign owned retail’s success will depend on adapting to, or overcoming, the local environment.

Decrepit, overwhelmed infrastructure in India’s cities – not least choked traffic – mounts a challenge for consumer and supplier alike.

Bulk buying is alien to local shopping habits. Middle class Indian families often send their staff on frequent, small purchase shops. The wealthier would sooner buy more expensive items in Dubai and Singapore than in their home cities.

Besides, the “mom and pop” shops will put up a formidable fight. Choice may be limited, but they extend credit and provide rapid delivery almost 24/7.

Right now the reform, and an estimated $20bn in foreign investment, hangs in the balance.

That is partly the government’s fault. Retail reform has been debated for 10 years, but selling economic policy to India’s 1.2bn people is not the strong suit of their rulers.

Encouraging moves to accelerate mining and power projects have also yet to bear fruit.

“We didn’t get elected on that platform [of reform],” says Salman Khurshid, the law minister. “We never claimed the idea was reform. We didn’t speak the language of reform.”

A frightening global economy and slowing growth has convinced New Delhi that it needs to dress up its shop window. Asia’s third largest economy faces shrinking capital flows and has a weakening local currency. It must now cut the ribbon.

Australia has the world’s largest reserves of uranium and senior New Delhi officials said the country could move to buy up assets if a ban on sales is removed, as favoured by Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

“Once Australia comes into the fold all properties will be reviewed,” said A.K. Sarangi, deputy general manager of strategic planning at the Uranium Corporation of India, the government agency responsible for mining and purchases.

India welcomed the move with External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna terming it an endorsement of the country’s “impeccable non-proliferation credentials.” But it remains to be seen whether Australia will insist on a regime of inspections similar to its pact with China. Also, the Green Party, which backs the Labour Government, is opposed to Australia supplying uranium to a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Home to 40 per cent of economically extractable uranium and globally the third largest exporter, Australia had agreed to supply uranium but the decision was overturned after the Labour Party defeated the incumbent Conservatives in 2007.

This took a toll on the bilateral relations and India was prepared to send an envoy to the Labour Party’s conference to explain its energy needs and stand on proliferation.

Ms. Gillard set the ball rolling the first thing in the morning with her op-ed article in the Sydney Morning Herald. “We must, of course, expect of India the same standards we do of all countries for uranium export — strict adherence to International Atomic Energy Agency arrangements and strong bilateral and transparency measures which will provide assurances our uranium will be used only for peaceful purposes,” she wrote.

The Prime Minster followed this up at a news conference in Canberra later in the day. The first issue she mentioned was the question of uranium and India. “The Labour Party’s current platform prevents us selling uranium to India, because it is not part of the NPT. I believe the time has come for the Labour Party to change this position.”