IN the elegant oak-panelled splendour of the Calcutta Club, thoughts turn back to Indian independence.

The 110-year-old institution in the country’s third largest city, Kolkata, is a relic of the raj, British rule that ended seven decades ago this year.

The chaotic and traffic-jammed streets outside this oasis of faded elegance and calm bustle with colourful life. They tell of a modern India of economic expansion and growing world importance.

But for the world’s largest democracy of 1.3 billion people the history books tell a bittersweet tale.

Independence after some 70 years of rule from London ended in 1947 following a long non-violent campaign by nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi when the country was split into two: secular Hindu India and Muslim-controlled Pakistan.

It forced India to create a united nation from a vast diversity of peoples while satisfying post-colonial demands for political freedom.

The solution was democracy with universal suffrage and maintaining the administrative machinery and bureaucracy of the British, not unlike proposals to maintain EU rules and procedures here at least initially after Brexit.

This nuclear-armed country has been a remarkable success story given its huge complexity and its situation in a troubled part of the world bordered by Pakistan, China, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan.

Democracy has bred more than 1,000 political parties, women vote in larger numbers than men and former “untouchables” have increasing influence and rising social status.

India today has been thriving economically under hard-line Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party.

The economic indicators had been overall consistently positive, particularly compared with times under their former colonial overlords. Inflation is running at about two per cent, two-thirds of the population are of working age, it has some $400 billion of foreign reserves and a lively and substantial stock market.

But all is not perfect.

A bold move last year to wipe out huge corrupt gains by cancelling high-denomination bank notes was defeated when an estimated 99 per cent were deposited or exchanged for new currency despite the risk hoardings would be traced.

A prudent move to introduce a single national sales tax, compared with a patchwork of local and state sales tariffs, has had a troubled birth and is hobbled by what for many is a baffling complexity.

Growth has fallen to 5.7 per cent in the three months to the end of June, its lowest for three years, and compared with seven per cent last year.

The challenge is very real. Some 12 million young Indians join the workforce every year and like in many developing countries the potential for unrest cannot be far away unless the labour force can be expanded.

Former BJP finance minister Yashwant Sinha summed it up in a stinging rebuke this week. “The prime minister claims he has seen poverty from close quarters….his finance minister is working overtime to make sure that all Indian also see it from equally close quarters,” he wrote in the Indian Express.

The BJP, criticised for Hindu supremacist bigotry, is blamed for rising anti-Islamic sentiment and mob violence against Muslims. The party visibly wants to impose rules founded on Hindu codes no matter citizens’ beliefs or traditions.

A prominent journalist murdered this month in Bangalore who was unstinting in criticism of right-wing Hindu nationalism was the latest in a line of media figures assassinated for questioning Hindu religious orthodoxies.

However, in a sign of judicial independence, the Supreme Court recently ruled that there is a fundamental right to privacy with wide-ranging implications, including matters of personal choice such as sexual orientation in a country that until now has seen gays and lesbians subject to prosecution.

The infrastructure is creaking, not least that of one of the world’s largest railway systems with 1.3 million staff. Derailments are frequent and accidents claim hundreds of lives a year. A recent deal that will see Japan build a high-speed bullet train line from Mumbai is a start but the backlog is huge.

India faces continuing tension with neighbouring China, not least over Beijing’s growing influence over South Asia that New Delhi sees as within its sphere of influence. A military stand-off over a new road in the Doklam area of the Himalayas was settled last month but had raised fears of a potential military confrontation.

For Myanmar’s Rohingya minority fleeing world headline-making military crackdowns in Rakhine province into Bangladesh and India, these benighted Moslem refugees face a bleak future in India. An estimated 40,000 have crossed into India since a crackdown in 2012 but New Delhi has now decided they pose a potential extremist security threat and wants these stateless people out.

And yet. As waiters in crisp white uniforms glide with drinks among the mainly elderly Calcutta Club patrons and lively debates about politics and economics waft through the grand bar, India remains a remarkable triumph as the world’s largest democracy.