BY LIZ SLY - Chicago Tribune

NEW DELHI - (KRT) - The advertisements are everywhere, on television, in newspapers and in magazines. "India Shining," the slogan proclaims, over pictures of happy-faced people talking on their cell phones, going shopping and reading newspapers trumpeting the latest good news about the booming economy.

"India is awakening to a new dawn," croons the voice on the TV ads. "Our dreams were small, but now anything is possible. Across India, you can feel a new radiance."

The advertisements don't mention the hundreds of millions of Indians who can't read newspapers, let alone afford a television set, and the campaign has drawn criticism from social activists for overlooking the country's chronic poverty.

But the ads, soon to be broadcast globally, nonetheless capture the spirit of a rapidly changing India that is starting to redefine its image, to itself and to the world.

Buoyed by a surging economy, an expanding network of international relationships and the prospect of peace with Pakistan, a newly confident India is asserting its aspirations to become a global power, as a nuclear-armed nation and as a potential market of 1 billion people.

"If the 20th century belonged to the West, the 21st century will belong to India," the deputy prime minister, Lal Krishna Advani, told an audience recently to loud applause.

"Our short-term objective is to become a developed nation, like Singapore or Taiwan," he added. "Our long-term goal is to be on a par with America."

For a country in which per capita income averages less than 2 percent of America's, that is a bold objective. India has declared itself on the threshold of greatness on several previous occasions, only to see its hopes dashed on the realities of the country's choking bureaucracy, its crumbling infrastructure and its vast legion of about 300 million impoverished people.

Yet the fact that some Indians are daring to dream of superpowerdom is an indicator of the country's new mood, said C. Raja Mohan, professor of South Asian studies at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

"For the first time in 45 years we've gone from saying, `We're a Third World developing country,' to saying, `We're going to be a developed nation and a great power,'" Mohan said. "It's a fundamental shift in terms of perceiving who we are and what we can do."

Much of the confidence stems from a flurry of good news on the economy.

Foreign-exchange reserves passed the $100 billion mark in December; the stock market has soared more than 70 percent in the past year; and growth reached a sizzling 8.4 percent in the third quarter of 2003, making India one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

The growth can be attributed partly to one of the most favorable monsoon seasons in years, giving a boost to the farmers who still account for 70 percent of the labor force.

But as U.S. and European companies continue to shift jobs to India by the thousands, India's expanding middle class also is lifting growth by splurging on cars, apartments, appliances, clothes and vacations.

Indian companies, until recently dismissed as inefficient losers, are emerging as world leaders in such fields as information technology and pharmaceuticals. Over the past year they have moved aggressively into the global market for the first time, acquiring more than 40 foreign companies in the United States, Europe and Asia.

The new confidence also is finding expression in India's relationships with the wider world. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has pushed to mend fences with rival China, initiating talks to end a 40-year cold war along the two nations' disputed Himalayan border since their 1962 war.

Most significantly, after leading India to the brink of war with Pakistan in 2002, Vajpayee now has extended a "hand of friendship" that is expected to lead to peace talks next month.

"There was this dawning realization by the Indians that they couldn't accomplish their global ambitions unless they first made peace with Pakistan," said Shireen Mazari, director of the Institute of Strategic Studies based in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The global recognition that India craves is starting to come. The United States, Iran, Israel and Russia are among the many nations upgrading their relationships with India. President Bush promised earlier this week to open cooperation with India in space, nuclear and high technology, fields that are crucial to India's ambitions to become a technology powerhouse.

Once regarded as worryingly close to the Soviet Union and suspiciously socialist in its policies, India now is being hailed by Washington as a "strategic partner" that could one day provide a useful counterweight to the emerging might of China.

"There is an assessment that Indian power over many fronts is growing steadily and that other countries must develop a working relationship with it," said Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution, who predicted the rise of India in a 2001 book.

Cohen believes India finally is reaping the benefits of a halting but steady reform process that will translate into enduring growth.

"India still has substantial problems, but for the first time it's going to have the chance to address them," said Cohen, who is attending a conference in India on ways that U.S. and Indian scientists can use high technology to combat terrorism.

"More than any other time in the years since I've been coming here, you have a countrywide sense of optimism."

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is calling early elections, which probably will take place in April, six months ahead of schedule. A renewed mandate seems likely for the Vajpayee government.

Yet the government cannot claim all the credit for India's gains, economists say. It has lagged on promises to liberalize the economy and to invest in new infrastructure, such as roads and power stations, that is urgently required if India is to have any chance of becoming a developed country, said Suman Bery, director of the National Council of Applied Economic Research.

It also has failed to tackle India's ballooning budget deficit, which threatens economic growth.

"There's a lot that still has to happen if the current level of growth is to be sustainable," Bery said.

That includes addressing poverty. More than half the world's poor live in India, and at least some of them are getting poorer. According to a recent UN report, the number of hungry Indians increased by 19 million, to 213.7 million, from 1999 to 2001, years in which India's new economy was starting to take hold.

But the shining part of India is in no mood for gloom.

"If you look around you, if you walk on the street, you can see with your own eyes that the country is changing," said Prathap Suthan, creative director of Grey's Advertising, the agency behind the media campaign. He disputes allegations that it fails to reflect the realities of India.

"Everyone can feel it," he said. "There is a wonderful spectrum of things coming together."

Source: Chicago Tribune - Kansas City