India, still a third-world country

We constantly hear from the media about how India and China are the two fastest growing economies in the world but, given that they rely heavily on foreign investment, how far can they climb when stuff like this happens?

Corporate India is in shock after a mob of sacked workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who had dismissed them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi.

Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, an Italian-headquartered manufacturer of car parts, died of severe head wounds on Monday afternoon after being attacked by scores of laid-off employees, police said.

The incident, in Greater Noida, just outside the Indian capital, followed a long-running dispute between the factory's management and workers who had demanded better pay and permanent contracts.

If corporations can't count on the rule of law in India, who'll be willing to build factories, banks, and depressing tech-support centers for goods sold to Americans? What are personnel and capital investment worth when an angry mob can destroy either or both with impunity? India has a long way to climb to convince the rest of the modern industrialized world that they aren't barbaric savages when the mood strikes them.