New Delhi, July 3 -- The mortal danger, of losing our democracy, was far from apparent in May 1994, when Prime Minister Narasimha Rao paid his first and only state visit to the United States of America. Although it came a bare seven years after Rajiv Gandhi's visit in 1987, it far surpassed the former in importance for it took place in a world transformed by the end of the Cold War and an India transformed by its new-found economic freedom. In the US, the Democrats had returned to power after being in the wilderness for twelve years. Victory in the Cold War had released US foreign policy from its straitjacket, and revived some of the expansive generosity it had shown towards Germany, and the developing countries, in the first decades afte...