“For me, though, the arrival of these two companies, so emblematic of American consumerism, and so emblematic, too, of the West Coast techie culture that has infiltrated India’s own booming technology sector, is a sign of something more distinctive,” Mr. Kapur writes. “It signals the latest episode in India’s remarkable process of Americanization.” Mr. Kapur concludes by saying, “India’s Americanization” has been a “wonderful thing” as it has begun the “process of dismantling an old and often repressive order.” But he worries about what will replace that order. “The American promise of renewal and reinvention is deeply seductive — but, as I have learned since coming back home, it is also profoundly menacing” he writes.