Aditi Phadnis Whether it is Sri Lanka, Maldives, or Nepal, quietly but steadily, India has been reclaiming some of the ground it had lost to China, observes Aditi Phadnis. With 2021 drawing to a close, as themes go, Covid dominates the horizon — the administrative hits and misses in handling it, the sense of loss and emptiness, impotence, and rage. But the other story that dominated India’s consciousness in the year past was China. What it did. And how India responded. There are myriad ways in which China has been asserting itself. Of course, there is salami-slicing on the border,...