The world has not dealt very well with India, nor has India dealt very well with the world. But as Paul Keating observed in a speech late last year an adequate architecture for the world cannot be created without finding a place for the democratic government that speaks for the one billion people of India. By testing nuclear weapons last March, India has transformed the world we live in and posed a particular dilemma. It has demonstrated the continuing acute relevance and utility of nuclear weapons at a time when the end of the Cold War had led many people to hope that the nuclear threat was fading. Even so, the failure of the five declared nuclear weapons powers to make more meaningful progress towards nuclear disarmament means they must bear a portion of the responsibility.

More generally it is the failure to integrate India a into the global institutional framework that contributed to India's frustration and sense of insecurity. The particular dilemma of today lies in the desire of the international system to make sure that India does not derive any benefit from its nuclear tests while at the same time realising that it is imperative to enrol India fully into the international system. With a country of India's size and importance, this cannot be achieved by coercion. Underlying this particular dilemma is a broader problem of perception and political recognition. As Greg Sheridan argued in The Weekend Australian, India presents many similar problems to Western policy makers as did China 20 years ago. The West should have the same debate about India as it has had about China. Is it better to engage India or to contain India? Even to frame the debate in that fashion provides its own answer. It must be better to engage India.

To do so effectively it is also necessary to treat India as an emerging great power. India represents one-sixth of the human race. It is the possessor of one of the great strands of human culture. It has also, whatever its policy failings in different areas; been for more than 50 years an exemplary democracy - an astonishing achievement given India's level of poverty. India's shift to a market-based economy; albeit at a slower than optimal pace, involves a paradigm shift every bit as great as the similar move by China over the past 20 years. It holds out opportunities, for India and for the outside world, equally as great. Canberra has recently had a poor relationship with New Delhi, which needlessly limits our ability to participate in the great, historical venture of Indian modernisation. We should repair that relationship and offer intellectual leadership, not least to Washington, on the fundamental and inescapable importance of finding a new paradigm for India's place in the world.