Depending on how you define them, emerging markets represent anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of the global population. The conventional wisdom has been that the balance of economic power is steadily shifting, as poor nations are rapidly catching up to the developed world.However, according to Ruchir Sharma, head of Emerging Markets and Global Macro at Morgan Stanley Investment Management and the author of Breakout Nations, this shift is “relative and unspectacular.” To put it another way, growth in countries like India has been disappointing precisely because growth has been less than spectacular.If a country like India is going to be on the move, it needs to get a lot of people out of poverty. To do that, India needs to grow at a much faster rate than the U.S. However, per capita income is still very low in India, and therefore, this “miracle economy” is in trouble.Sharma’s nuanced view of the shifting balance of global economic power comes from spending time on the ground in e...