Dr Singh said India is now witnessing "unprecedented economic growth" such as 7 or 8 percent a year. Besides, "the world wants us to do well." So we can "eradicate poverty [and] hunger if the current momentum is maintained for five to 10 years."

Dr Singh announced several welfare schemes. But his promises haven't kindled the hope that India will soon become a country "where there are no barriers between the government and the people." His slogan "garibi hatao, rozgar badhavo" hasn't caught on.

One reason is that the Independence Day address has long ceased to be a conversation between the Prime Minister and the public. The people have heard far too many promises to be impressed by more.

Another reason is that the UPA doesn't seem all ready to embark on a radically new policy course. It's content to carry on with the NDA's policies, with a slightly greater emphasis on the "human face" part of the formula, "Globalisation With a Human Face."

The public knows that higher GDP growth need not mean more jobs, even better nutrition. Twenty years ago, India's annual GDP growth was 3.5 percent, but employment expanded at 2.2 percent. Today, employment is only growing by 1.1 percentless than half the rate of addition to the workforce.

India's growth is unbalanced too: services are growing rapidly, industry sluggishly, while agriculture, on which 60 percent of people depend, is in distress. Farm incomes are falling. Mounting indebtedness has driven 9,000 farmers to suicide since 1998.

Today, annual per capita foodgrains consumption, 154 kg, is 20 kg lower than 6 years ago, and of the same order as in the 1940s, the decade of the Bengal Famine. Two-fifths of farm households recently queried by the National Sample Survey said they would quit farming, given a choice.

There are other contradictions in today's India. We have a fairly stable political democracy, a rare success in the Third World. But this goes hand-in-hand with social bondage and economic servitude. Millions are barred by lack of social opportunity from developing their elementary human potential. For the 48 percent of Indian children who are malnourished, the future is sordid and cruel. 47 percent of Indian mothers are anaemic, a proportion twice as high as in sub-Saharan Africa after two decades of civil war, economic collapse, and famine.

India prides itself as a constitutional democracy. Yet, it's not a rule-of-law society. Its state cannot guarantee citizens that most basic right, the right to lifewitness Delhi 1984 and Gujarat 2002. The state is often predatory upon its own people, as in Kashmir, the Northeast, or Gurgaon.

India is among the world's top three buyers of armaments and has the globe's third largest army. But India belongs to the bottom one-fourth of all nations in the UN Human Development Index. As the Indian state's "National Security" obsession grows, human security declines, with shrinking food security, income security, gender security, and personal security.

India is rapidly urbanising. But 52 percent of its urban population has no sanitation. 35 percent lives in slums. Indian cities are among the world's most polluted and congested.

India for decades campaigned for global peace and nuclear disarmament, and defended mulilateralism and multipolarity. Today, it has become a camp-follower of the world's most belligerent power in pursuit of Empire. India has joined the Nuclear Club and craves recognition from the United States as a "responsible" nuclear weapons-state (NWS) -- a contradiction in terms.

Traditionally, India has opposed occupation. Today, it has a close military relationship with Israel, which has no intention of ending Palestine's occupation after quitting Gaza.

New Delhi is offering to collaborate with Washington's occupation of Iraq in the name of "democracy" and "stabilisation." India recently sanctified US unilateralism by signing the defence and nuclear cooperation deals with Washington.

India has failed to expand its room for independent manoeuvre in the world despite its growing economic and military strength. It has attached itself to Washington's apron-strings. Unequal "strategic partnership" with the US is earning India enmity, especially in Asia.

Politically too, the US-India alliance is turning counter-productive, witness India's compromise with the US's skewed trade agenda. India's desperate search for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council has proved illusory.

All in all, India has weakened its credentials as an independent non-aligned country. This is one of the four pillars of the Great Project India embraced at Independence, the others being democracy, secularism and socialism. The other pillars too have faced threats.

True, the dire predictions made until the 1970s haven't materialised. The last British-Indian army commander-in-chief Auchinleck was convinced that 1947 would be only the first of many Partitions. In 1975, Time magazine ran a story entitled "India: A Huge Country on the Verge of Collapse."

These scenarios haven't materialised. But India's institutions have been weakened and its secular aspirations have suffered rude shocks through the anti-Babri mobilisation and the BJP's ascendancy to power.

It's a great achievement that the Indian people have beaten back some of these threatsby defeating the Emergency-era Congress, bringing the hitherto disenfranchised into public life, and voting out the NDA.

Popular empowerment is India's greatest gain. It's the key to rectifying aberrations from true democracy. But there can be no empowerment without attacking poverty, combating income and regional disparities, and creating social opportunity.

This is best done through public action. Market forces won't bridge social divides, nor reduce disparities in access to health and education.

That's the challenge before the UPA. It cannot address it by adding a "human face" to inequality-enhancing globalisation. To make India "a truly great nation," the UPA will have to change policies. The sooner, the better.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.