It was a call to arms. India, the paper announced, was 'on the brink of global success' and it was up to readers to seize the moment and build their country into a superpower.

Posters declaring 'Our Time Is Now' were pasted up throughout the capital. The paper hired India's best-loved Bollywood star, Amitabh Bachchan, to promote the message through a series of television advertisements, proclaiming in his growly baritone that 'quietly, while the world is not looking, a pulsating, dynamic new India is emerging', an 'India which is looking up at the sky and saying: "It's time to fly".'

Abandoning any false modesty, the newspaper has homed in on a rising sense of euphoria about India's rapidly transforming economy and its growing clout on the international stage.

With investment banks predicting that India will become the world's third largest economy within two decades and a CIA report forecasting that the 21st century will be India's, this national self-confidence is spreading fast. 'We no longer discuss the future of India. We say: "The future is India",' Trade Minister Kamal Nath likes to remark.

Last week such triumphalist excitement was on display in abundance with the news that the Mumbai-based Tata Group had bought out the Anglo-Dutch Corus Group (which comprises what used to be British Steel) with a $12.2bn bid - the largest foreign takeover ever accomplished by an Indian company.

Beneath the headline 'Empire Strikes Back', one paper reminded readers that British colonial administrators had repeatedly tried to stifle the growth of the Tata family business in the early 20th century. 'Corus, the erstwhile British Steel and one of the icons of Her Majesty's Empire will now fly the [Indian] Tricolour,' the paper said. 'It's the first step towards what we call the Global Indian Takeover,' a front-page headline promised.

Travel a few miles outside the bubble of prosperity in Delhi or the financial capital, Mumbai, and this superpower mania can seem bewildering. Beyond the sleek glass-tower blocks that house call-centre offices on the outskirts of the city, and the extravagant, Florida-style apartment complexes (titled with imaginative dishonesty 'Bayview Heights' or 'Heritage Luxury'), the new India suddenly disappears.

Instead there is a vision of a more troubled India, where around 700 million people scratch a living out of agriculture and some 300 million battle to survive beneath the poverty line. Horse-drawn carts dodge trucks as they drive the wrong way down the national highway, overloaded with leaking sacks of grain. Visibly weak infant children break stones in the central reservation, helping to repair the road surface.

Health Minister Ambumani Ramadoss highlighted these paradoxes in a speech he made recently: 'India is on its way to becoming a superpower, but unfortunately 50 to 60 per cent of children under three years are undernourished,' he said. 'We have the IT revolution, but then we have this pitiful infant mortality.'

The two most powerful people in India's government are at pains (at least in public) to restrain the national surge of triumphalism. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently highlighted the inherent tastelessness in harping on about the country's glorious economic destiny at a time when such a large portion of the population continued to be excluded from the benefits of growth. Singh urged his listeners to remember the 'vast segments of our people who are untouched by modernisation; who continue to do backbreaking labour,' and, with characteristic honesty, listed the countless obstacles standing in the way of enduring economic success - illiteracy, failing healthcare, lagging education systems, crumbling infrastructure, hunger, poverty.

His words were echoed by the leader of the ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, who warned against the prevailing 'superpower obsession', emphasising that while India had become a country of 'dazzling prosperity' it still remained a nation of 'dehumanising poverty'.

Both leaders have a vested political interest in avoiding the spirit of self-congratulation which surrounds them; appearing to be sensitive to the needs of those excluded from the country's financial boom is a vital part of their electoral strategy.

But the words of these leaders have done little to quell the simmering excitement in the media and the business community. Indians already view themselves as the second most powerful nation in the world behind the United States, according to a study by the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, and among international leaders there is no doubt about India's soaring global stature.

India's indispensability to the US was displayed last year with the sealing of a ground-breaking civilian nuclear pact. Last month the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, came with a contingent of 150 senior business people from the UK to display Britain's own desire to expand trade ties with India (although his message was drowned in the far noisier debate over whether comments made on Celebrity Big Brother represented lingering racist attitudes in Britain towards India.) There have also been visits by trade delegations from China and Russia, eager to capture business.

As part of its campaign, the Times of India has nominated 2007 as the 'Year of India' and its columnists have no patience for doubters. With customary self-assurance, a recent editorial explained: 'Combine our new-found economic and political clout with our increasingly influential diaspora and our status as a global soft power or superwower (from Bollywood and Indian art to yoga and spirituality), and Brand India is on a roll like never before.'