Sixty is a confusing age. You are obviously too old to be described as young, you are well past customary middle age, but you are not yet ready to knock at the Pearly Gates. It is a nebulous, in-between moment, something similar to the feeling, "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." Since we live in times where numbers are worshipped, there is much hoopla and hyperbole, orchestrated perhaps by the publishing and media industry, regarding India's 60th birthday.

Size and diversity have ensured we have had no military coup and only one civilian one, for 18 months, from 1975-77.

While one may be understandably eager to wish the Republic many happy returns, I wonder why 60 is seen as such a sexy landmark—considering that just 10 years ago we went through an identical uplifting exercise.

Nevertheless, for a relatively young and still fresh democracy, any number is welcome if the looking back and looking ahead involves something more than sentimentality and nostalgia. The advance publicity to the run-up to Wednesday, August 15, unfortunately, relies too heavily on self-congratulation and self-promotion. I would have preferred to see a little breast-beating and honest reassessment.

The backslapping, let me quickly add, is not entirely unwarranted. In the past 10 years, India's tentative steps into the brave, new world of economic reform and globalisation have yielded handsome results. All the talk of attaining "economic superpower" status may be premature and pompous but the boost to the country's self-confidence and self-esteem (best summed up in that awful phrase: "India can do it") means the middle-class native can roam the world head held up high, even though it may still be necessary to line up like the shivering Boat People at international airports. Happily, we have crossed the glass half-full or half-empty stage, our march forward is no longer a matter of perspective or a matter of individual perception. Optimism is justified. The deniers are few and far between.

However, self-congratulation needs a dose of realism. Before my critics say, there he goes again, let us remind ourselves that in Superpower India, 75 per cent of 1.1 billion citizens live on less than Rs 80 a day, out of which 30 per cent live on less than Rs 40 a day. The NGO Child Relief and You tells us that 50 per cent of India's children get no school education; 25 per cent of victims of commercial sexual exploitation are below 18; 1.2 million children under the age of 5 die of malnutrition every year; 90 per cent of working children live in rural India....

To enumerate these dismal figures, to emphasise that substantial chunks of our shining republic live in conditions of sub-Saharan poverty, is not designed to dampen the celebrations or put out the lamps. It is merely to jog the collective memory of the firecracker enthusiasts that we still have a long way to go. If "inclusive India", instead of being a term of abuse, name-calling and contention, henceforth becomes the top priority of all political parties, the 60th birthday celebrations would have more than achieved their purpose.

As I write, hundreds of scholars all over the planet are busy writing, debating, discussing and analysing the "miracle of Indian democracy". How does this fragile and fickle creature prosper on Indian soil? Since 1947, there has been no shortage of prophets of doom, both local and foreign, who prophesied that in five or ten years India would become either a tinpot banana republic or descend into bloody chaos. Yet, in 2007, the miracle is clearly visible for all to behold!

That the cards were stacked heavily against "a land of Babel with no common voice" is a commonplace. How a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, argumentative, bulky piece of real estate, encircled by juntas and tyrants, managed to hold its 14th free and fair general election in 2004 (in which the incumbent was unceremoniously thrown out) makes even sage heads sit up in bewilderment.

Nevertheless, I believe too much is made of the aforementioned secular miracle. After all, the United States is as, if not more, heterogeneous than India, and few people repeatedly remark on the survival of American democracy.

Many years ago, I asked a cerebral infantry brigadier why a military coup had never taken place in India. Why had it never even been attempted? Size, he replied, the country is just too big! "Which TV station does the army capture?" he asked. In 1999, Pervez Musharraf's soldiers concluded a coup in less than four hours simply because the number of strategic points the army had to seize were few. And all in one city. Besides, there were just two generals whose support Musharraf needed in order to execute the operation. An army takeover in India has been conspicuous by its absence not because no ambitious chief has ever thought of it, or because our troops are extra patriotic, it has been absent because the logistics of a coup d'etat were always impossible. Let us thank Lord Rama for gifting us a continental-sized landmass!

One other fact to remember: we remain a functioning democracy not despite the multiplicity of gods, tongues, regions, temperatures, colours, cuisines, but because of them. As Indira Gandhi discovered in 1975-77, there is no way you can rule the whole of India from Delhi. Again, size and diversity ensure that in 60 years we have faced only one civilian dictatorship—and that too for merely 18 months.

I am not discounting the wise historian Ramachandra Guha's British bequests—the army, the railways, the English language, the game of cricket—plus our own Bollywood songs, which have helped keep this country at once democratic and united. I am just adding a caveat that the putative civilian or military despot was probably put off his anti-national designs when he examined the social, political and regional map of the country.

Even my critics would concede that I am not given to jingoism. However, as I contemplate India and the world on our republic's 60th birthday, I feel privileged, even blessed, to claim citizenship of our loud, messy, sometimes infuriating but unfailingly robust, resilient and free democracy. I realise we have no choice in these cosmic matters, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that if I am reborn as a human thanks to my good karma (printing your rude letters must be worth a few brownie karmas), I hope it is close to Nizamuddin East in New Delhi.

Why do I feel privileged and blessed? Because I dwell in a land where two make-or-break, defining battles of the 21st century are being staged. First, can a country long cursed with the flush maharajas vs starving peasants image create a society through market capitalism which is approximately fair, just and equitable? Can we, say in seven years, eliminate the shaming poverty of the aam aadmi courtesy an economic system perceived to be loaded against the poor while favouring the rich? The world is watching with breathless fascination whether a developing country like India, with no option but to embrace the global free market consensus, can deliver to 400 million people the basic amenities of life.

Second, the "clash of civilisations" champions will either triumph or perish on our soil. If India can demonstrate that 160 million Muslims can be absorbed into the national mainstream, rejecting

Mr bin Laden's suicidal radicalism, to emerge as devout but non-militant citizens in an overwhelming Hindu majority state, we would have delivered a terminal blow to the Samuel Huntingtons of our time—intellectual bigots who insist that Islam cannot peacefully coexist with other religions. No other country on our estranged globe is better placed to wage this crucial clash.

It may be the heady 60th anniversary brew, but I feel India will win both the battles.