For once, India’s leading parties are engaged in an election debate about the troubled economy. The debate is focused inward, mired in misleading claims about which party has a better track record for managing the economy, and oblivious to India’s place in the world. The raging economic debate is new and healthy, but it would be more constructive if it was less self-absorbed and backward-looking. It is hard to understand why they are spending so much time talking about the mediocre records of governments in which neither ostensibly played a decisive part, rather than focusing more on the future.