India, Aug. 26 -- By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam

There was a time or so our grandmothers insisted, when a neighbour dropped in with a plate of payasam simply because it was Tuesday and the mood had struck her. No festival demanded it, no impending favour justified it and certainly no reciprocal plate of anything was expected in return.

I belong to a generation still gullible enough to have believed such stories. Having lived long enough now, I can report with some authority that we have moved on from that innocent republic into a far more efficient one, the Republic of Quid Pro Quo, where every gesture arrives with a small invisible invoice attached.

Consider the wedding invitation, that most sacred of Indian documents. It used to be an ann...