By Amulya Ganguli INDIA'S transformation from a "land of snake charmers" to a major regional power in the 21st century has been measured in various ways. One of the latest surveys described it as the fourth happiest nation in the world. Calculations on the basis of purchasing power parity also place it in the fourth place after the US, China and Japan. However, one of the most graphic demonstrations of India's development was the $5 million aid that it provided to the American Red Cross in the aftermath of the havoc wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the Mexican Gulf coast region. India has also been engaged in major development efforts in Afghanistan, pledging an aid of $550 million and, recently, it has offered $25 million to neighbour Pakistan towards relief for victims of the recent earthquake that hit South Asia. Indians who remember the 1960s would regard much of this generosity with a measure of surprise and pride. The '60s were the decades of drought and devaluation of the rupee, the war with Pakistan and a dire prediction by a writer in The Times, London, that the 1967 polls would be India's fourth and last general election. Rumour had it that the 1965 war did not last for more than three weeks because both the countries ran out of ammunition, supplied by their superpower friends. Displeased with the conflict, the US had threatened to withdraw its food aid, forcing then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to appeal to his countrymen to forgo one meal a day to save food. Today, thanks to the 'green revolution', India has huge stockpiles of foodgrain. The result is that the occasional drought no longer arouses the fear of famine, as in the 1960s. Besides, as the economist Amartya Sen pointed out, the prevalence of democracy in India ensured that deaths from starvation and malnutrition were kept to the minimum because of the publicity they received - unlike China, where millions perished during the same period because of the closed, tyrannical nature of its society. Since India's economy is expected to grow at the rate of 6 to 7 percent, making it one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, fears of destitution, so widespread in the years immediately after independence, are fast receding from the national psyche. The economic development that has taken place doesn't mean that India has had notable successes in dealing with its ageold problems of poverty. There is little doubt that large sections still subsist on the bare minimum of food and shelter. Percentage-wise, a quarter of India's one billion people live below what is known as the poverty line. The good news, however, is that their proportion is coming down all the time. From 51 percent in 1977-78, the number of those below the poverty line fell to 36 percent in 1993 and to 26 percent in 1999-2000. The year when the decline began is significant. India began the process of economic reforms in 1991 and within a decade there was a 10 percent fall in the number of the poor. Despite the fall, it cannot be denied that the gap between those at the bottom and those at the top has widened. While there have been huge increases in the salaries of professionals and the earnings of businessmen in the new age of economic liberalisation, there has not been a similar rise in the incomes of the poor despite the inevitable trickle-down effect. The same phenomenon has also been noted in China, which began its economic reforms more than a decade before India did and has been growing at a faster pace. But if the gulf between the rich and the poor there has caused apprehensions of social unrest, such fears are virtually nonexistent in India because of the safety valve provided by its democratic system. Just as Indian democracy has ensured that the country is able to successfully defuse the problems of religious fundamentalism and terrorism, it has also taken the wind out of the sails of political extremism of the kind which is a deeply troublesome feature in Nepal where Maoist guerrillas have taken advantage of the absence of democracy to spread their anarchic message. India too has its Maoist extremists, but they are virtually no more than marauding groups of bandits, who may terrorise the villagers in remote areas and attack raiding police parties with stolen modern-day weapons. But they do not pose any major threat to the country's integrity and stability. India's success in climbing out of the desperation of its earlier years is all the more remarkable because its neighbours haven't been equally lucky. Pakistan remains a military dictatorship for all practical purposes. Nepal has lapsed into a despotic monarchism after a brief period of democracy. Bangladesh is plagued by Islamic fundamentalism. Sri Lanka hasn't been able to bring its civil war to a successful conclusion and Myanmar can be said to have fallen off the map with its closed world of military dictators. In contrast, India is a beacon of hope with its vibrant democracy, growing economy and a highly successful experiment with a multicultural polity.