New Delhi, May 3 -- By Ankit Srivastava, Chief Editor

For a long time, the world was explained from a few familiar capitals. Power had an address. Finance had a language. Development had a script. Countries outside the old centres of influence were often expected to accept advice, absorb shocks, borrow money, export raw materials, and wait patiently for their turn.

That patience is thinning.

Across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, a different mood is visible. It is not loud in the old revolutionary sense. It is not always ideological. It is more practical than that. Emerging nations are asking a simple question: why should the future be designed elsewhere and merely delivered to us?

This question is now shaping trade,...