The world may have come a long way from depicting India as the land of snake-charmers, poverty and hippie havens, but an economically and geopolitically ascendant India still sits uneasily with the West's mind-portrait. One such broad brushstroke has been sections of the foreign media's obsession with India's 'democracy indicators sliding'. This is rich coming from democracies that have changed leaderships faster than Tunbridge Wells turnstiles, or tackled their post-election results by storming their seat of government.