In foreign policy, the NCMP pledged to correct the NDA's strongly pro-United States bias, advance the peace process with Pakistan, fight for a multi-polar world, and return to the global nuclear disarmament agenda.

This agenda remains unfulfilled. The pro-US slant in India's policy has become more pronounced, as evidenced by the US-India nuclear deal. The India-US "strategic partnership" has eroded India's sovereign decision-making. And the UPA has forgotten its promise to fight for a world free of the scourge of nuclear weapons.

India is also getting drawn into a new "quadrilateral" strategic forum with the US and its close allies, Japan and Australia. In May, the "quadrilateral" grouping held consultations in Manila, provoking demarches (formal diplomatic communications) from China.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has tried to allay Chinese concerns about the "quadrilateral." But his assertion that "there's no question of ganging up against China" is unlikely to reassure Beijing.

After all, in a veiled criticism of China, Singh also said: "We Asians often look at each other through borrowed eyes." More important, he added: "The international system is about power relations, it's not a morality play."

How India sees "power relations" has since become clearer -- with the docking of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz at Chennai, and the debate triggered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's remark that non-alignment "has lost its meaning."

Take the Nimitz. The nuclear-powered warship called at Chennai at India's invitation, amidst protests by political parties, trade unions, and some of India's tallest public intellectuals, including celebrated writer-dramatists Mahasweta Devi, Arundhati Roy and Habib Tanvir, historians Romila Thapar and Sumit Sarkar, economists Deepak Nayyar, Prabhat Patnaik and Amit Bhaduri, and ex-civil servants S.P. Shukla and Sudeep Banerjee.

The warship's call wasn't a neutral or innocent affair, but an unambiguous statement of strategic proximity with the US.

The UPA claimed that the ship wasn't carrying nuclear weapons, and hence its visit didn't violate India's well-established policy of disallowing foreign nuclear weapons into its territorial waters.

This claim flies in the face of the US's well-reiterated policy to "neither deny nor confirm" the presence of nuclear weapons on its warships under any circumstances. Yet, India gratuitously granted this certificate to the US. This speaks poorly of its foreign policy.

India has travelled a long way from opposing the transit of nuclear weapons in its neighbourhood and the US base at Diego Garcia, and demanding a Zone of Peace in the Indian Ocean.

During the Bangladesh war, India bristled when the US sent the aircraft-carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal. This was considered "nuclear blackmail." Today, India willingly invites American gunboat diplomacy.

What has changed is not the US's arrogance or hegemonism -- but India's willingness to accept it.

The Nimitz's visit was intended to send a message. The warship was involved in offensive operations in the Gulf. It was again sent there two months ago as part of a 50-ship armada to threaten Iran.

Its India visit came amidst feverish lobbying in Capitol Hill, to make the India-US nuclear deal conditional upon cancelling of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline. India is tightening its strategic embrace of Washington at the expense of relations with third countries.

The Nimitz visit sent a deplorable signal amidst the destabilisation of West Asia caused by the US-led invasion of Iraq. The fact that 10 other nuclear-powered ships recently visited Indian ports is no excuse. This shouldn't have happened in the first place. Such precedents cannot justify a policy violation.

This criticism of the Nimitz's visit isn't rooted in knee-jerk anti-Americanism, or opposition to a balanced, dignified, mutually beneficial relationship with the US, but in a cool-headed analysis of Washington's global role.

The US is setting negative examples through its Abu Ghraibs and "extraordinary renditions," through Guantanamo Bay, "pre-emptive war" doctrine, militarisation of space, work on new nuclear weapons, opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, trade protectionism, and support for despotic governments.

In Chennai, US military personnel performed community service -- after committing unspeakable crimes in Iraq. They were permitted free entry into Chennai, without visas or passports -- an extraordinary step!

Now consider the media response to Rice's attack on the Non-Alignment Movement, and the Indian statement that: "NAM's relevance continues in promoting South-South cooperation and the democratisation of the international system."

Many commentators have declared non-alignment dead. NAM should "roll over," an editorial said, to be replaced by "cooperation between democracies ... Since democracies are used to settling internal disputes through a process of dialogue rather than violence, it stands to reason that two democracies will use the same processes as far as possible in case of disputes."

This is nonsense. The US does not usually resolve disputes through "dialogue" -- witness Iraq. It remains committed to coercion, and the first use of nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear states.

To imagine that there can be a "Community of Democracies" that cuts across the vast economic inequalities, cultural diversities and political differences that mark today's global order is dangerous self-delusion.

At this delusion's roots lie many Indian middle-class pathologies: uncritical admiration for the US, consumerist greed (best fed by an American-style economic model), unbridled individualism, and the arrogant belief that India is now in the Big League. In reality, India belongs to the bottom fourth of the world in human development.

Yet, India is one of the world's few countries, according to a recent survey of 46 countries, where the US's approval rating is 59 percent among the middle class. In all European countries (barring Poland) it is lower (30 to 45 percent). This is also true of Latin America and Asia, barring Japan.

This doesn't speak of rational, critical thinking on the Indian elite's part, but of its deep disconnect from the world. This can only produce a disastrously one-sided pro-US orientation which sells the Indian people short.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.