India, Aug. 9 -- Terms of trade, revealed comparative advantage, NTB, MFN - jargon which has underpinned global trade over the past thirty years has been assigned to the proverbial WTO bin by Donald Trump. A new Agent Orange is wreaking havoc across fields of globalisation assiduously tilled by the liberal economic order.

This calls for a complete reset in how India negotiates its economic national interest, moving away from the dharma of Yudhishthira and learning a trick or two from Shakuni. It is Shakuni's cunning which must be India's guiding principle in resetting trade relations with the US - premised more on an understanding of human psychology and ego than trade economics. A crude man will respond to a crude plan, so India needs t...