India, July 11 -- On 30 May, I was at the Cambridge Union in conversation with Professor Jaideep Prabhu. In that hall, where Churchill and Hawking have both been heard, the audience before me was made up largely of economics and management students. But one thing became clear very quickly. However sophisticated the education, there comes a point where no theory helps and no degree comes to the rescue. At that point, the question is no longer about the world. It is about the questioner. A one-hour session stretched into conversations over nearly two days.

And what I saw at Cambridge, I saw throughout the tour. At Oxford, in the British Parliament, at the London School of Economics, and in public dialogues. The lack was the same. People kn...