Recognising India as a country on the move with a newfound confidence -- a confidence for which Jawaharlal Nehru yearned 60 years ago --
Time magazine says 'India faces challenges the size of an elephant but the world's largest democracy is living up to the dreams of 1947.'
The magazine, which has come out with a special cover to mark the 60th anniversary of India's independence, says it is well-known that economically, India is going places.
'Western businessmen who have been losing sleep over China may be worrying about the wrong country. It is Indian corporations that are proving to be formidable competitors in the global information-driven economy,' writes the magazine's senior editor Jim Erickson.
The magazine refers to Pandit Nehru's famous speech on August 14, 1947 -- often described as one of the greatest pieces of oratory -- in which he said, 'A new star rises, a new hope comes into being,' a reference to India's freedom.
'Even those who love India with the crazy passion it engenders will admit that such hope has not always been fresh in the past 60 years,' writes
Time International Editor Michael Elliott.
'But...we saw sign after sign that many of the old doubts and disappointments had fallen away,' says the magazine, pointing out that while the 70s were a time of indecisiveness, the current phase is one 'of amazing ride' of economic boom.
The issue has six articles exclusively devoted to India in its various dimensions -- the robust middle class, religion, politics, an incredible transformation of its economy and the human dimension of change that has caught the attention of world's political leaders
and corporate czars.
The magazine also chronicles the conflicts, travails and turning points that have gone into the making of a modern India.
'India is a place that one sees through a kaleidoscopic prism, its cacophonous street unafraid of its blemishes and warts,' says an article written by Ishaan Tharoor.
In another article, famous writer William Dalrymple, the author of
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857, argues that India's rise is not a 'miraculous novelty' as depicted by the Western media and that it is a return to traditional global trade patterns.
'The idea that India is a poor country is a relatively recent one as historically, South Asia was always famous as the richest region of the globe,' he writes.
Another write-up on India's gigantic economic strides puts the entire scenario in its proper perspective.
'Twenty years ago the rest of the world saw India as a pauper. Now it is just as famous for its software engineers, Bollywood movie stars, literary giants and steel magnates,' it says.
Touching on the human dimension of the changes in India, the magazine has included a write-up on the three generations of a family -- the family of Malhotras.
'Their tale is a great reminder that the changes in India over the past 60 years are not just abstract numbers on paper but the stories of lives and families.'
In her study of Islam on the subcontinent, Aryn Baker looks at the way in which such lives and families have been shaped by faith, and by memory.
'It always amazes me how the past is very present in Pakistan's politics and society,' says the article.