But tensions between the two Asian giants are likely to keep simmering. It goes back to China's devastating surprise attack along their Himalayan frontier in 1962.

They still cannot agree where their border lies - with Delhi seeking the return of territory in the northwest, but China claiming an even larger slice from India's northeast.

It is still not clear why China risked torpedoing this week's visit with last month's incursion, but analysts say it may have decided it had to respond to a recent Indian military build-up in the area.

Growing trade has helped bring the two closer together - despite other gripes, including India's shelter for the Dalai Lama, China's support for Pakistan, and water.

But with both countries in an economic slowdown, the room for the necessary compromises on the border issue is even more limited. So no one is expecting any breakthrough and more flare-ups are possible.

It's a sign of the intense pressure they are under after the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex on 24 April - with most of the 1,100 dead lowly-paid garment workers making cut-price clothes for the West.

Several big names, including Sweden's H&M, the biggest buyer of Bangladeshi-made clothes, have now signed up to a legally-binding code requiring them not just to meet minimum fire and building safety standards but to pay for them.

The UK's Primark and Tesco, and C&A of the Netherlands, have also come on board, before a deadline set for 15 May - although the basis of the code was drawn up more than a year ago.

Until the Rana Plaza disaster hit the headlines, only two firms had been prepared to sign: PVH, the parent of Calvin Klein, and Tchibo, a German retailer. Both companies have already said they'll agree to the new terms.

Many others are still holding back, though, including some British retailers and the US giant Gap, which is reportedly unhappy at the binding terms of the deal, when it says it is already taking its own measures to boost safety at factories it uses.

H&M was under particular pressure to sign from an online petition organised by Avaaz, a human rights group, in the aftermath of the deadly collapse. With the blunt title "Crushed to Make Our Clothes", it has so far gathered nearly one million signatures from around the world.

Buoyed by its success, Avaaz says it is now targeting Gap and trying to embarrass others into signing.

At the same time, the Bangladeshi government has also announced plans to make it easier for garment workers to form unions.

The government has also agreed to talks on raising the minimum wage in the clothing industry from its current level of 3,000 Bangladeshi Taka a month (about £25; $38).

It had been stalling on the issue before the disaster, partly encouraged by factory owners - at least of 30 of them also serving MPs in Bangladesh's parliament. Workers' groups say they are pressing for a near tripling in the minimum wage, to around 8,000 Taka per month.

Questions remain, though, about this apparent new willingness to reform in the beleaguered industry and the Bangladeshi government.

"We had the right to form a union before," says Kalpona Akter, of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker's Solidarity. "But whenever workers tried, factory owners would just harass them and fire them."

A central complaint was that factories were able to target anyone joining a union, using their membership lists, which they automatically saw. The government says it will now amend the law so owners no longer have this right - something activists have been demanding for years.

They also want to see progress in resolving the case of a garment union official murdered last year - amid widespread accusations of government complicity. Aminul Islam was active in fighting for garment workers' rights but his body was found dumped outside Dhaka in April 2012 bearing clear signs of torture. But so far no one has been arrested - despite the name of one suspect being widely known.

While the owner of the Rana Plaza is now awaiting trial, campaigners ask why there has been no move to even question the owner of the Tazreen factory, where more than 100 workers died in a devastating fire last November. They were making clothes for the US giant Walmart, and C&A.

Walmart is among those who have not signed up to the new safety code. The company had not responded to an emailed request for comment by the time of publication.

But with major names now signing the safety deal, the many Western clothes companies using Bangladesh are looking more divided. There was already friction within this habitually tight-lipped community, because many firms who were using the Rana Plaza complex have yet to admit their association - in contrast to Primark and Canada's Loblaws, which were quick to come out and promise compensation.

Italy's Benetton eventually admitted a link following publication of photographs of its labels in the wreckage and testimony of survivors, though it maintains its subcontractor stopped using the factory a month before the disaster because of poor standards.

The key issue for retailers is whether consumers will be prepared to pay higher prices, which seem inevitable now.

Government officials worry, though, that retailers may desert Bangladesh, looking for cheaper manufacturers to avoid the toxic publicity the country has now attracted.

With its close and many say corrupt ties to the garment industry, critics say the Bangladeshi government made it easy for both factory owners and retailers to resist binding safety measures before the disaster - not doing enough to respond to past calamities like the Tazreen fire.

Bangladesh commerce minister Mohammed Quader admitted in a recent interview that the government didn't do enough to "discourage" the worst operators "because we wanted the jobs".

A lot has changed now - but only after more than 1,000 people, many of them young women, have been crushed to death. The real test will come once the spotlight has moved on.

"I have seen my grave," she continues as she recounts being trapped under the rubble - before her relief at being rescued 24 hours later.

But her sister was not so lucky.

Hamida was a sewing machine operator in the same New Wave Styles factory, working just feet away.

Together Halima says they made clothes for brands like Britain's Primark, Italy's Benetton and Canada's Loblaws, often working 14-hour shifts for about $62 (£40) a month.

"All the time there was pressure to meet deadlines," she says. Other workers have given similar accounts.

But those regular salaries transformed her family's fortunes, with their father earning little from his job as a fruit-seller.

"I cried out Hamida's name after the building came down," she says, "but I couldn't see her."

Halima and her family still have no idea what happened to her.

A week since the disaster, Hamida Akhter is one of many workers still unaccounted for - in addition to more than 400 confirmed dead.

Just how many has become increasingly sensitive, as the fallout from the disaster continues to spread both here and abroad.

Claims from the Bangladeshi military that 149 now remain unaccounted for were greeted with howls of scepticism. NGOs have compiled similar figures suggesting at least 1,000 people still have to be found and the BBC has seen estimates as chigh as 1,300.

The Bangladeshi opposition have seized on the issue, accusing the government of a cover-up.

But "the higher figures have been inflated", says Brig Gen Siddiqul Alam Sikder, who is overseeing the recovery operation. In the chaos, he says many reports of missing people "were counted many times" as families went from place to place trying to find loved ones.

No one can know until the wreckage is cleared - and the mechanical diggers have yet to penetrate the pancake of concrete in the middle.

With hundreds of factories closed since the disaster because of strikes and protests, the industry is reeling.

"This has given us a bad name," admits the commerce minister Mohammed Quader, who oversees the garment industry.

Garment industry leaders have been meeting buyers, fearing they may start pulling out of Bangladesh and moving to places like Burma.

Mr Quader says the government "did not do enough" to discourage the worst practices in the business, as cut-throat operators have cashed in on the garment boom over the last decade.

But there have been plenty of safety warnings before - which critics say were largely ignored. Most recently there was last year's fire at the Tazreen factory, which killed at least 112 workers.

Primark and Loblaws are promising compensation to all families who lost relatives in factories in the Rana Plaza making their garments.

There are also now dozens of amputees who will need long-term help - some people could only be rescued by having their arms or feet cut off because they were trapped by heavy concrete.

But Western retailers with offices here insist they have been trying hard to improve standards - though few are willing to go on the record.

"We check our factories are compliant," says Stefan Strandlund, country manager for UK-based Wilson Imports, which works for several British brands. "You hope that what we are doing can be replicated by everyone else."

Workers in factories are paid an average of $62-69 (£40-45) a month, above the minimum wage of about $39 (£25) a month.

And he says that although that may not sound much to Western ears, "it can put food on the table, a roof over their head and send children to school because of the cheap cost of living."

Since the collapse, he has ordered checks on the structure of factories they use. He says the Bangladeshi government must work harder "to improve the industry" but says retailers also have the power to do more.

"But then", he asks rhetorically, "Is the customer willing to pay more?"

The bottom line is still price. And that is Bangladesh's advantage says Mr Quader. "No-one can do it as cheap."

Every day now, Halima's father Habibur Rehman, walks back to the ruined building hoping to find out something about Hamida.

Order sheets with Primark's name now litter the wreckage, with the smell of decaying corpses hanging in the air.

He joins hundreds of other relatives making the same grim search, from hospitals to a school that's serving as a temporary morgue.

Halima remembers chatting to her sister that morning last Wednesday. "She was saying how good the mangoes were this year."

Moments later the building crashed down on their heads.

She was crying as she emerged into the light on what was once the roof of the building. Rescuers shouted Allahu Akbar (God is great) as she was brought up on a rope and then carried away on a stretcher.

Emergency personnel say up to 14 more people are still trapped on what was the fifth floor of the building and work is under way to free them.

Hundreds of volunteers are still helping army and emergency services. Bodies are also still being retrieved from this massive tangle of concrete and metal.

There have been more clashes with police and protesters near the site as anger simmers over the disaster.

We passed dozens of riot police on the drive here, some were guarding other nearby garment factories following attacks on several others.

From the sprawl of one-room houses and shacks where workers live, scores of multi-storey factory blocks jut into the sky.

Clusters of steel-reinforcing rods poke from their rooftops - in the hope of adding yet another floor of sewing machines.

It's a sign of what critics say is a boom gone too far, in the desperation to feed the West's appetite for bargain clothes.

The Rana Plaza which collapsed this week was another of these high-rise stitching stations, with the UK's Primark chain one of its customers.

Primark has said that it was "shocked and saddened" by the disaster and that it would work with other retailers to review standards.

But everyone involved in the industry is in the frame now - because it's had plenty of warnings before.

It's less than six months since a devastating fire at a plant that was making clothes for Walmart killed over 100 workers - Bangladesh's last worst industrial accident.

There had been some efforts to tighten up.

Humayun Kabir, CEO of DIRD Ltd, which makes nearly 20 million garments a year for UK retailers including Tesco, Sainsbury's and Next, says his customers were already "much more vigilant", making frequent random inspections of his production facilities.

"No child labour" signs adorn the entrances to many factories, promising compliance with the official ban on under-18s in the garment trade.

It's not clear though whether inspectors have also been looking for cracks in factory buildings.

And there's a whole underworld to the garments industry largely untouched by any checks.

Dozens of sweatshop operations have sprouted up across Dhaka over the past decade trying to profit from the cheap clothes boom.

The BBC saw several back-street operations with few fire or other safety precautions and with people who were clearly children working on the shop-floor.

One of these sweatshop factories had made clothes destined for the UK in recent months.

It's an open secret that many higher standard factories often sub-contract orders to these sweat-shops to keep costs down and meet customer's deadlines.

It could just be a few thousand buttons or zips sewn on. Then the clothes go back to the 'good' factory - and the buyers may never know.

When it emerged that the Tazreen plant had been making clothes for Walmart, the US giant said it had no knowledge of this.

Whether any of the factories inside the Rana Plaza complex were involved in such practices is not clear.

Western buyers have been accused of turning a blind eye in the past, because of their interest in holding prices down.

The Bangladeshi government says it wants to improve conditions but worries about the knock-on consequences for the millions who now depend on the industry for jobs.

"The biggest human right is the right for survival," said commerce minister Ghulam Mohammed Quader in an interview before the latest disaster.

That sounds hollow now, as hundreds of Bangladeshi families grieve.

After this catastrophe, there is a lot more reflection going on over the real cost of cheap clothes.

As one Bangladeshi union organiser told the BBC: "You buy one get one free - but it's not really free."

India's Supreme Court insists the ambassador effectively handed in his diplomatic immunity with his affidavit promising their return. Yet, India could enter murky legal waters if it tried to stop the ambassador going.

Italy may have breached international law by breaking its promise, experts argue, but the ambassador still has diplomatic protection

The UK government had to back down on threats to lift the immunity of the Ecuadorean embassy in London after Wikileaks founder Julian Assange took shelter there.

But Italy's actions have caused such fury here, the Indian government has to stand firm.

So unless there's a compromise deal, India may now use its right under the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations to expel the ambassador.

All Indian airports and other border points have been told to prevent the Italian ambassador Daniele Mancini from leaving if he tries to do so.

The ambassador had earlier said he had no plans to go after hearing of the Indian Supreme Court's restraining order - so this looks like calculated escalation.

With no sign of Italy backing down, India is considering further retaliation.

"Italy is reneging on an assurance to our highest court," said foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin.

Even the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has become involved, calling for a peaceful resolution to the dispute.

The families of the two dead fishermen are keeping up the pressure for their alleged killers to be returned, while opposition politicians pummel the Indian government for its handling of the case.

There has been no comment from the Italian embassy here. But the Italian position is that marines should be tried in Rome because it maintains the shooting happened in international waters - something India disputes.

What makes Italy's position more complicated is the personal assurance Mr Mancini gave to the Indian Supreme Court that the two marines would return.

India argues that means he has willingly subjected himself to the jurisdiction of Indian courts despite his diplomatic status.

It is on those grounds that it rejects suggestions that it is compromising the 1961 Vienna convention which governs diplomatic relations.

Many other diplomats in Delhi - and even the Indian government - have expressed surprise that Italy gave such an assurance in court.

"We would never allow Indian diplomats to do the same," Mr Akbaruddin said.

The next step will come on Monday when Ambassador Mancini has to explain Italy's position to the Supreme Court.

A spiralling row has broken out between Delhi and Rome, taking diplomatic rules into uncharted waters and possibly even risking Indian relations with the rest of the European Union.

Accusing Italy of "unacceptable" behaviour, India has taken the unusual step of barring its ambassador to Delhi from leaving, after Rome changed its mind on returning two Italian marines charged with murdering two fishermen off the Indian coast last year.

The Indian foreign ministry has also called in the EU envoy to Delhi.

Diplomatic expulsions are commonplace when relations break down between states. Not so diplomatic detentions - which conjure memories of hostage crises.

No-one is going that far yet. But others watching the row says India's action leaves it open to the charge of breaching the Vienna convention which governs global diplomatic ties - potentially creating a dangerous precedent for its own envoys.

The Vienna text states that diplomats "shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention".

According to one foreign embassy official in Delhi: "It is for diplomats themselves or their country to invoke or revoke their diplomatic protection, not the host country."

With an indignant Indian media at its back, and two grieving families pressing for justice, the government is under pressure to take a tough line.

It has been accused of being weak and naive in allowing the marines to go.

But in effect, the government is saying Italy started the row by "breaching the norm of international law", in the words of one foreign ministry official.

Because of her Italian origins, Sonia Gandhi, the leader of India's ruling Congress party, is also being dragged into the dispute.

It hasn't helped that the two marines were welcomed home by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, looking like "heroes", says former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal.

At a briefing on Thursday, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin rejected suggestions that India was breaching the Vienna convention.

Moreover, Mr Sibal says it was the Italian ambassador, Daniele Mancini, who was the first to set a precedent by giving "an affidavit to the Supreme Court" (that the marines would return). By doing so, he argues, that Mr Mancini "voluntarily subjected himself to India's judicial process".

It is not clear whether international lawyers agree with that interpretation.

But Rome is refusing to send the marines back, insisting that the shooting happened in international waters and that they are not subject to Indian jurisdiction.

What may otherwise have been a nasty diplomatic spat between the two countries could still have much bigger repercussions if it is not contained.

"What is going to happen if the Italian ambassador now tries to fly out of Indira Gandhi International (Delhi's main) airport?" asks one Western diplomat. "Are they going to stop him? And what happens then?"

The row could affect ongoing negotiations between India and the EU over a free-trade agreement.

Italy is already briefing fellow EU governments in Brussels about the case, clearly keen to press its side of the story.

But warns Mr Sibal: "If Italy cares about its long-term interests here, it will discover this was a huge error."

"India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan" in Afghanistan, said Mr Hagel in a 2011 speech at the previously little-known foreign policy seed-bed of Oklahoma University.

If nothing else, it showed what a liability the internet can be for politicians who would wish for their past thoughts to be forgotten.

For Mr Hagel's Republican opponents, it was just a few clicks' work to ferret out the speech, get it online via a sympathetic outlet, then picked up 10.5 time zones away.

They must have been pleased at the rapid reaction, with India's embassy in Washington slapping down Mr Hagel's comments as "contrary to the reality". The Pakistani media predictably jumped on the story too.

However, having already hurdled charges of being anti-Israel, a last-minute accusation of being anti-India as well wasn't enough to stop Mr Hagel's nomination going through.

India is always sensitive about any questioning of its motives for being in Afghanistan. But officials are not that concerned about an old speech, or that the US is now turning against Indian involvement in Afghanistan.

"We have consistently received support and encouragement from our US partners for our constructive role in Afghanistan," says Syed Akbaruddin, spokesman for India's ministry of external affairs.

In fact, Delhi has sometimes appeared the reticent one, for example resisting calls from Washington to expand its training of Afghan security forces.

There's another reason, though, why this little episode may be more significant - because it highlights a bigger question over where relations between Delhi and Washington are going.

The high hopes for a new era of relations after a nuclear deal have "simply not panned out", says Professor Bharat Karnad at the Centre for Policy Research.

Instead, the two sides seem mired in misunderstandings and suspicion over everything from arms deals to technology.

And while India shares US concerns about China's rise, it has been wary of becoming a "cat's paw" of American interests.

It was former President George W Bush who got things going, ending decades of often frosty relations between the world's two largest democracies. And many see the end of his time in the White House as the high water mark.

"Republicans are always better for India," says Mr Karnad. "They have a much better strategic sense than the Democrats."

In fact, Mr Obama seemed interested in moving things on in his first term, but he seems to have other priorities in his second. And India fears it has lost its best supporters, with Hillary Clinton leaving the state department and Leon Panetta the Pentagon.

An Indian official admits "the jury is still out on Kerry and Hagel".

What about the British museum returning all the treasures looted from India during the Raj? What about sending back the Kohinoor diamond still embedded in Queen Elizabeth's crown?

And many commenting on this blog say it shouldn't stop at India - what about the many casualties of Britain's wars in Afghanistan?

But if Britain is in the mood to say sorry in India, there is one episode which stands out more than the Jallianwala Bagh massacre - the 1943 Bengal famine, when over 3 million people may have died, four years before the end of British rule.

If it gets any attention in the UK, it's seen as one more tragic consequence of World War II, with British India at the time focused on the war against Japan.

But British actions and opposition towards Gandhi's Quit India movement are now seen to have played a key role in the disaster.

While Winston Churchill condemned the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as "monstrous", he took a very different attitude to Indian suffering 24 years later as prime minister.

His only reply to a telegram reporting how many Bengalis were perishing was to ask "why Gandhi hadn't died yet."

Mr Cameron should have apologised for the famine says Madhusree Mukherjee, who has written a widely praised history of the Bengali famine.

And why not? Tony Blair expressed regret for the Irish potato famine and for Britain's role in the slave trade.

British officials say the motivation for going to Jallianwala Bagh was not to apologise for the Raj.

"He wanted to express his condolences for that particular incident because he was visiting Amritsar," said a Downing Street spokesperson.

Madhusree Mukherjee says the prime minister may have wanted to avoid going further because "any admission of wrongdoing could facilitate a legal claim for reparations".

The chief reason Mr Cameron went to Amritsar was because of the large numbers of voters of Punjabi origin back in the UK. So he had to say something about Jallianwala Bagh, officials say.

Many dismiss the practice of political apologies for past events as meaningless. Mr Blair, critics say, could easily say sorry for the Irish famine, but was never going to apologise for the Iraq war.

But David Cameron has set a precedent now in India, with his desire for "a special relationship". If he plans a trip to Calcutta while he's still prime minister, he won't be able to avoid the Bengal famine.

His chief diplomat here was confronted with the issue after giving a speech in Delhi a couple of months ago, when an elderly man jailed by the British demanded to know when the UK was going to say sorry.

There's speculation that David Cameron is about to do so during his second trip to India as prime minister.

I was watching the UK High Commissioner's speech and Sir James Bevan's uncomfortable expression made clear that he had no prepared line on the question. He tried to dig himself himself out saying that as he had been born after independence he wasn't qualified to comment.

Some say a proper apology from Mr Cameron will help build the new "special relationship" with India he is seeking.

He has some way to go.

"Except for the kids going to England for education and support on the [UN] Security Council, it matters less and less", says one well-connected Indian investor who'll be in meetings with the Prime Minister.

The use of "England" is one indicator of the 'special relationship' Indians are more interested in.

On the eve of Mr Cameron's arrival, one of its leading papers had a three-page feature headlined 'United States of India' gushing about its obsession with all things American.

The former colonial power didn't even get credit for the language in this love affair, with the paper talking about the two countries being joined by "Americanese".

That India looks more towards the US now is hardly news. It has been for years, with students flocking to its universities and American brands making growing inroads here.

And while Indians are still drawn to British universities, the visa restrictions the prime minister now says won't be as tough for Indians as they sounded have dented that side of the UK's appeal too.

Trade has grown a few billion since his last visit in 2010, but it lags behind European competitors like Germany and even Belgium, with France catching up - and in position to leap ahead if it signs a deal to supply new jets to the Indian air force.

And while India has been busily buying up large chunks of British industry, its biggest trade partners are China and the US.

But UK companies still have plenty of "headroom for growth" in India, says Adrian Mutton who runs Sannam S4, which helps foreign companies get started in India.

So would an apology help?

Mr Cameron can certainly do better than Prince Philip, who made one of his trademark gaffes on a visit to Amritsar in 1997 by describing the death count as "vastly exaggerated".

Relatives of the estimated 1,000 Indians mown down by British bullets in 1919 are reportedly expecting an apology.

And "it would be welcomed across India", says former Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran.

But any benefits may be short-lived. Author and former business chief Gurcharan Das says a British apology would be like "political gimmickry". It's simply not an issue for most Indians, with over half the population under 30.

"The minds of young Indians have been decolonised," says Das. "The new generation just wants to get on with it."

That's what the UK needs to do too, says the investor. It also needs to focus on what it can bring here.

"With the Japanese, you know they are about railways. With the French, it's nuclear power."

"We don't know what the Brits are here for," he says. "They are all over the place".

He is a minister in the state government in India's Uttar Pradesh state.

Mr Paras is also charged with taking part in the gang-rape of a local woman.

The Indian government has promised speedier justice for crimes against women, shaken by protests over the fatal gang rape of a Delhi student.

Five of the accused are already on trial in a hastily-established fast-track court. A sixth accused, who is a minor, is being tried in a juvenile court.

But six years since Mr Paras was first charged, his case has neither been prosecuted nor dismissed.

The outcry over the Delhi gang rape has prompted a wider backlash against the old order, and the number of Indian politicians allowed to remain in office while facing serious charges is under the spotlight again.

Mr Paras' case is far from unusual.

According to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a Delhi-based campaign group, a third of India's 4,835 elected representatives have declared criminal charges against them - many of them face serious cases like murder, rape and kidnapping.

The figures are based on information politicians themselves provide in their mandatory pre-election declarations.

Uttar Pradesh has more alleged criminals in its administration than any other state: Mr Paras is among 29 of 58 ministers charged with some kind of crime.

The state transport minister, Mehboob Ali, is charged with attempting to murder a rival politician, Nawshad Ali, last year.

He shows us the charge sheet drawn up by police, called FIR (first information report) in India.

But the minister disputes whether he has been charged.

"Maybe there is a complaint in a court or a police station," he says. "Maybe after an investigation, it might be found to be untrue."

On his election declaration, he has admitted to other past attempted murder charges, as well as kidnapping and robbery.

So far, there has been no progress in any of these cases.

Mr Paras says everyone in his Nagina constituency knows about his rape charge, insisting that it is "a conspiracy" fabricated by rivals.

That's possible in India's robust politics.

But it can be rare for women to press charges of rape - especially in rural areas like Nagina where tradition and caste govern life.

Many do not even report an assault because of the fear they will be ostracised by their family and community.

However serious the charge, as long as a politician is not convicted, he or she can stay in office under Indian law.

They are helped by the overloaded justice system, where even minor cases can drag out.

But ADR's national coordinator Anil Bairwal says politicians can also use their position to delay their cases "not just for years, but decades".

Until India's courts try more politicians, Mr Bairwal says the "poison" will spread through the world's largest democracy.

When Uttar Pradesh's Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav took power last year, he pledged not to appoint "tainted" officials to his government. His office would not agree to an interview, despite repeated requests.

Other parties, including the Congress, have made similar pledges.

Yet, ADR figures show, the number of accused politicians keeps rising.

Parties need them to deliver votes, especially where religion and caste play such a key role.

Mr Ali has a proven track record at delivering votes from his fellow Muslims in his constituency, winning four elections in a row.

Mr Paras won by nearly 30,000 votes last year in Nagina, with a particular appeal among members of his Dalits or untouchable caste.

With a general election due in the next year, "India's democracy is in danger", warns Gopal Subramaniam, a former solicitor general and one of the authors of the Verma Commission report into the Delhi gang rape case.

Their report called on all politicians facing serious charges to resign - coming into line with many other democracies.

But Mr Paras rejects the idea of standing down: "Just charging someone is not enough, you have to wait until you are convicted."

So when a well-known Indian entrepreneur said last month's gang-rape on a Delhi bus was India's "Rosa Parks moment" he took some flak.

And many others simply scoffed at his idea that the outcry over the crime has reached the level of a new civil rights struggle.

Remember the protests over the Mathura rape case, the sceptics say, or the huge crowds for the anti-corruption protests in 2011: What did they achieve?

More of that later. But six weeks on, the brutal assault has at the very least changed the conversation and how India sees itself.

And even if their instinct is to ride things out, politicians are having to listen.

It's hard to think of another situation in which a head of state anywhere would use a national day address to mark the death of one 23-year-old woman.

This weekend, India's President Pranab Mukherjee, was doing just that in his speech to mark Republic day.

He called the anonymous rape victim a "symbol of all that new India strives to be".

The student's death, he said, "has left our hearts empty and our minds in turmoil".

Her shadow was also hanging over India's biggest literature festival, that's been taking place in the city of Jaipur - but with participants trying much harder than politicians to respond to this turmoil.

Last year, the five-day jamboree of writers and thinkers was dominated by the exclusion of one man, Salman Rushdie.

This year, the unofficial theme was, the exclusion of half of India's population from playing its full role in the country.

And you could hear conventional wisdoms crumbling as restrictions on women came under scrutiny.

It was men not God who bar women from mosques, said Muslim academic Ashgar Ali Engineer, deriding the idea that such bans are to protect them from harassment.

"There's something wrong with men, if even in the presence of God they cannot control their desires," he said.

He got cheering applause, as much for the novelty of hearing a man attacking male rather than female behaviour.

American philosopher Michael Sandel sparked more soul-searching by asking his mainly Indian audience to debate attitudes towards rape and moral parallels between the sexual and the communal violence India has seen so much of.

It's not a discussion any Indian politician would go near yet.

But the responses were illuminating, with some arguing sexism is so embedded that like untouchable castes, women need special legal protection to "level the playing field".

Yet, many other women complained such thinking was demeaning and kept them on a "mother-goddess" pedestal, with their virginity as the touchstone of family honour.

"My identity is more than my virginity," said one.

It was at the Jaipur festival that Nandan Nilekani, the founder of Infosys, made his "Rosa Parks" remark, in a discussion on why India has fallen so far behind China.

His fellow panellist Gurcharan Das echoed his thoughts, praising the youth-led protests over the Delhi gang-rape for opening up a new "dynamic for reform".

Like many, he sees a continuum from the anti-corruption movement.

Far from fading away, he believes it provided a base for a wider campaign for India to run itself better.

And he predicts more "eruptions" until the political class responds.

Of course, a literature festival hardly represents a national mood.

But former chief justice Jagdish Verma was sounding the same note when he released his review of India's rape laws, saying "a failure of governance" was at the root of the country's troubles.

It was also time, he said, to review the immunity of Indian forces from prosecution, for widespread allegations of using sexual violence against women in Kashmir.

Just a week earlier, India's ruling Congress Party was in Jaipur too, for its annual brainstorming session.

With a general election just a year away, this was an especially important meeting and how the grand old party of Indian politics should respond to the new voices emerging from the rape protests, dominated their discussions.

Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi promised the woman's death would not be "in vain".

So far though, all they seem to have come up with are plans for more training in social media and anointing her son Rahul as her successor - who managed to sit out the rape protests without saying a thing.

But six weeks after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, she could never have guessed how big was the wave she had begun.

And the ripples from the Delhi gang-rape case haven't petered out yet.

After visiting the spartan house in a rundown Delhi neighbourhood where she lived with her parents and brothers, you could see how much they had put into helping her realise the dream, shared by so many hundreds of millions of Indians.

Many of the young and middle class Indians - men as well as women - who've joined protests in recent weeks said it was that sense of shared identity, as well as the shocking nature of the attack, that had propelled them onto the streets.

Yet the victim - who legally still can't be named in India - seems to have been much closer to the accused, in her background and means, than to the many wealthier Indians who've been confronting police lines for the first time.

That was the impression I took away after her family invited us in - having also seen the homes of most of the six arrested for this gruesome crime.

The woman's home in a narrow alley doesn't have a proper roof, so the place was damp and water-logged after recent rain storms.

Next-door neighbours were looking down at us through the gap from their tiny dwellings just feet away, as we climbed the stairs to her bedroom - a curtain serving as a door because the lower half was missing.

The walk there took us along muddy streets strewn with rubbish, in a far western suburb of Delhi its rich elite would never visit. Until last year, the area was still classified by city authorities as an illegal slum.

The lanes of Delhi's Ravi Das colony, the slum district where four of the accused had their homes, were if anything in better shape.

Like the student's family, at least two of the accused are from impoverished villages in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, and source for many of the thousands of migrants who come to Delhi every year hoping for a better life - the same journey her father made nearly 30 years ago.

And the other men are from similar migrant backgrounds. Where they differ, though, was in what they did about it.

"We gave our all to our daughter," her mother told us, still devastated with grief.

She says she can barely leave her bed, complaining of frequent headaches and chest pains.

And their support was working: her daughter was studying at a college in Dehradun in northern India and was on course to qualify as a physiotherapist, while working overtime in a call centre.

"We never gave our sons better treatment," said the mother. In that respect they were also different from many among India's middle class.

Figures show they are just as likely as poorer groups to favour male children, even before they are born - and afterwards in care and medical treatment.

It means India is in a rare category - along with only China - of having higher rates of infant mortality among girls than boys.

The student's mother also lashed out at India's sexist attitudes, attacking the many politicians and other public figures who've suggested she brought the rape on herself.

One well-known spiritual guru even said she should have embraced her attackers as "brothers" to stop them assaulting her.

"Either they don't have daughters," her mother said, "or they are clearly backing these crimes."

Her stance is also a sign of how it's simplistic to see the outcry over this brutal crime as being a kind of "Arab spring" by the more educated middle class.

Her father, sitting on the bed where they laid her body after she was brought back from Singapore, is now left with the memories of his determined daughter.

Echoing his wife's criticisms, he said India had to change to make sure such crimes never happened again. "The character of our society is very poor," he said.

But his daughter's example, he said, was that "you should stand up for yourself. Don't lose, only win."

What makes this story even more tragic is that the young student was clearly so close to doing that.

I'm based in Delhi, so working out where the world's largest democracy is going takes up most of my time. I'm also keeping an eye on Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives - and I make frequent trips to Afghanistan where I used to be based, watching the run-up to Nato's pull-out in 2014.

You can see and hear my latest television and radio reports here as well. It's daunting trying to report on a region that covers a sixth of the world's population, so I'm keen to hear your comments and thoughts on what we're doing.