Manmohan Singh is back to manage the Indian economy. But since when he last framed national economic policies, the Indian psyche has changed almost unbelievably. In his first innings as finance minister, India was seen as a push-over, political light weight and an economic burden to the world.

Today there is a sea of change. India is a nuclear power. It is no more dismissed as an ambitionless pacifist. Instead it is seen as an aspiring global power. The latent energies of India, or its rajas, have been aroused in the last few years. This is what Swami Vivekananda commended a century ago, but the Indian leadership just did not capture what he meant.

But the new Indian understands what that patriotic monk said. He understands that the world respects power. So the new Indian is seen as an aspirant, aspirant for his due place in the world. He is aggressive, no less than those in the West. He is confident. No longer begs for foreign aid. Instead he says 'no' to it.

In the last two budgets, Jaswant Singh has made it clear that we do not want aid, we would rather give. The new Indian no more bends for foreign investment. He is happy if it came. No more feels inferior relative to China in terms of FDI. He says confidently that China is foreign investment driven, while India is entrepreneur-driven.

The world recognises what he says and predicts that China will lose to India in the long run only because foreigners, not Chinese, and foreign investment, not Chinese investment, are developing China.

In contrast, India is being built largely by Indians and Indian investments. These mark the beginnings of a nation aspiring to be a global power. This transformation of the Indian mind is the greatest development of the Vajpayee era. The result we see in how the world perceives us now.

Some time back, Goldman Sachs said that by 2050 India would be the world's third largest economy. A week back Martin Wolf, Associate Editor, Financial Times, London, predicted that India will overtake, Yes overtake, the US and China in 2025, in real GDP growth. And will be the largest economy in the world by 2050, ahead of all, including the US and China. This is our brand today.

This reverses the brand India of the past, which attempted to capitalise on poverty as our claim on the global economy. For long we had presented India as a poor, illiterate and unfortunate nation. Indira Gandhi did attempt to reverse it, but could not, as its national agenda too was based on poverty as an asset to be exploited and not a problem to be solved.

Presenting India as a nation of poverty was de-emphasised under Vajpayee's leadership. While national politics can be successfully played with poverty as the political agenda, global geo-political game cannot be played with national poverty as a global issue.

While China learnt this long ago, we did not. We continued to present India as a poor nation that needed, and wanted, aid and help. This psychology has changed in the last few years. The new image of India is today built on Pokharan power, Kargil victory, technical manpower, the skills of our young IT professionals, our industry's new-found confidence and not on the notions of poverty and illiteracy.

Our image in the world has changed. The truth is that we have poverty, but we are not a poor nation. We have illiteracy, but we are not an illiterate country. We have problems but our nation is not the problem. Yes it is true, the India that Manmohan heads today is very different from the India whose economy he managed eight years ago.

Manmohan will realise all this and more. He has experience of what the world respects. He knows that the world respects power, but merely sympathises with poverty. While respect yields trade, investment and stature, poverty gets aid in return and also the image of being a burden on the world.

But Manmohan's problems will come from his new colleagues, the Marxists. For them India's poverty, not power is to be projected and exploited. China exploding atom bomb is for them show of power against imperialism, but the Indian bomb is a show of chauvinism.

In their eyes there is no poverty in China and India is full of poverty and nothing else. For them India is the problem, and should be projected as such to the world. The Marxists still play politics of the poor.

This will conflict with the emerging brand of India. The Communists do not understand that one-sixth of humanity cannot play the game of poverty and win. Will Manmohan Singh be able to save new India's confidence, which has changed the global perception about India, from his new allies? This is his biggest challenge.