Such craving for status comes naturally to our upper crust which spends millions of rupees on exhibitionist weddings and shows uncharacteristic patience in waiting for years for membership of the local gymkhana club or golf course costing Rs 20 lakhs-plus. Status fetishism expresses itself in buying children's admissions to super-expensive schools offering international courses.

Of a piece with this is the government's decision is to create a new numerical sign for the Indian Rupee. “With this”, said Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the Rupee “will join the select club of currencies such as the U.S. Dollar, British Pound sterling, Euro and the Japanese Yen that have a clear distinguishing identity.” Even the Chinese Yuan doesn't enjoy such elite status.

It's doubtful if the new Rupee symbol “reflects and captures the Indian ethos and culture”, as claimed. It's an amalgam of the Roman and Devanagari scripts—and lacks high global recognition value given the world's unfamiliarity with Devanagari. Nor does it have the pictorial quality of Greek, Mandarin or Arabic writing.

The Dollar, Pound and Yen have been major convertible currencies for decades. The Rupee isn't convertible. The Euro sign is of recent origin, but conveys continuity with the Greek letter epsilon through a stylised “e”—and suggests a link with the European civilisational heritage. The Rupee sign lacks such attributes.

That apart, it's hard to see the world readily adopting a new sign for a currency in which very little exchange or trade occurs. Despite its recent growth, India's foreign trade represents only about 1.3 percent of world trade in goods and services. The US and China each have about a one-tenth share. Even the UK, by no means a great and growing power, has a share that's twice higher than India's.

Even higher is the status of a currency in which sovereign governments hold their foreign reserves and commodities like oil, gas, minerals and metals are traded. Here, the Dollar remains dominant although the Euro is growing. Even the Yen hasn't been able to challenge the Dollar's dominance despite “the Japanese Miracle”.

China has just displaced Japan as the world's Number Two economy. Its foreign exchange reserves exceed $2 trillion. If China sells off its enormous holdings of US government bonds, it can bring about the US economy's collapse. Yet, the Yuan isn't the world's reserve currency. For this to happen, it's not enough that a nation has a powerful economy. And India, whose GDP is only one-fourth that of China's, isn't remotely in that league.

The craving to place the Rupee among the world's great currencies, then, is less about global acceptance of India as an economic superpower than about its ruling elite's grandiose self-image. The world still sees India as an emerging power, not as China's peer, or even as The Next China. China is an industrial giant and a great manufacturing power. Despite its service sector growth, India isn't a great industrial power. India is seen as—and in reality, remains—a poor country.

However, our policy-makers want to raise India's profile to an exalted level politically, militarily and economically. Consider India's hubris-driven attempt to transform itself from an aid recipient to an aid donor. This became crudely obvious with British Prime Minister David Cameron's recent visit. Indian officials doggedly insisted there must no British announcement of any aid or donation. This almost led to a diplomatic row.

In part, this reflected New Delhi's annoyance at recent reports of massive embezzlement of British aid to the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and British aid minister Andrew Mitchell's announcement of a substantial likely cut in the $610 million aid to what he called “nuclear-armed” India.

India's attempt to reduce dependence on official development assistance (ODA) goes back to the India Development Initiative announced in 2003. Under this, India kicked out all aid donors barring six—US, UK, Russia, Germany, Japan and the European Union (EU). It announced it would no longer accept tied aid. And it launched a tiny ODA programme for some poorer countries.

The aid was terminated in a fit of pique by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, which was upset at the worldwide criticism of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom and some EU countries' effort to fund the victims' relief and rehabilitation. The official explanation was that the small donors' aid was tiny and carried high administration costs. But the real reason was political—and a pretty sordid one. Thus, US aid was retained although it's minuscule (under $50 million). So was paltry Russian assistance. But Dutch and Nordic aid, although substantial, was stopped.

Such refusal of aid is morally reprehensible. A government which has failed to eradicate poverty in 60 years and presides over huge income divides and persistent destitution has surely no right to refuse aid which could benefit India's poor. The decision was driven by the NDA's “India Shining” arrogance, which lost it the 2004 elections. But the UPA continued the policy. Indeed, it launched a power-projection drive by sending relief material and medical assistance to several countries affected by the tsunami of 2004. India tellingly used naval ships and personnel to deliver the aid.

India has since stepped up loan guarantees, technical training and ODA to some poorer countries. This was done partly to generate goodwill where India is investing, and partly to balance growing Chinese influence in Africa. But China is in an altogether different league. Its ODA is estimated at $25 billion. India's is under $1 billion on the best estimates.

For all its strenuous efforts, India continues to be dependent on external aid. It remains a recipient of bilateral assistance, annually totalling over $2 billion—mainly from the EU and Japan. Some of this is targeted at worthy programmes. For instance, two-thirds of British Department for International Development aid goes to health and education. India also remains the biggest borrower of concessional finance from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank—essential for major programmes like the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and the metro railway.

Indian aid has doubtless done some good in Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Especially relevant are Indian training programmes for judges, police, diplomats and technicians. India's $1.7-billion aid for Afghanistan has attracted praise because of its fine targeting, emphasis on capacity-building, and elimination of middlemen.

Even if some of this is driven by strategic calculations—to neutralise Chinese and Pakistani influence—, the overall effect is positive. This is also true of India's cancellation of debt owed by countries like Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Guyana and Nicaragua.

However, much of India's aid is tied to Indian goods, services, and often, personnel. This contrasts with India's own refusal to accept tied aid! Double standards are also evident in India's economic relations with Africa, based on the extraction of oil, gas and minerals. India, like China, is practising the same kind of mercantile colonialism in Africa for which it has always, rightly, criticised the Western imperialist states. New Delhi must rethink its Africa relations and its aid policy.

Today, neither India nor China presents a model worthy of emulation by the rest of the Third World. Their rapid GDP growth has extracted a high price: ecological destruction, especially in China, and explosive disparities. India's social sector record is abysmal.

The UN Development Programme has just released its Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) estimates, which assess deprivations in education, health, assets and services and provide a fuller portrait of acute poverty than income measures. There are more MPI-poor (421 million) in eight Indian states—Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, UP, and West Bengal—than in the 26 poorest African countries combined (410 million).

India can set a worthy example by adopting an equitable, balanced, climate-responsible development model which assures basic needs with human dignity for all its people, including food security, safe drinking water, sanitation, healthcare, education and public participation. India can also put its growing global power to good use by acting as the representative of underprivileged peoples and nations to demand reform of today's unequal international economic order.

Tragically, there's no debate in the country about the purposes of India's power and the broader aims it should pursue to make the world a better place. India will be ultimately judged by the world not on the basis of its GDP growth, IT achievements or number of billionaires, but its success in combating poverty, in creating a secure, peaceful and prosperous neighbourhood, and in making a better world possible. To do this, our elite must give up its delusions of grandeur. (IPA Service)