India is a country of contradictions: it is home to 55 billionaires, with an economy growing at an enviable 8 per cent a year, yet more than 800 million of its people live on less than 30p a day.

It has a thriving hi-tech industry, yet in the past decade 200,000 farmers have taken their own lives as they struggled to make a living. But its power is growing and its population will overtake China's by 2030, so this special issue of the NS asks: will we like the world's newest superpower?