It was a dramatic signal to the world that India wanted to be seen as a giver and not a taker of aid in the wake of the towering waves that wrought havoc along Indian Ocean coasts.

India lost more than 16,000 people as villages were wiped out along its southern coast and on the Andaman and Nicobar island chain, as well as suffering economic damage estimated by the United Nations at 2.5 billion dollars.

But while the world rallied to raise more than 10 billion dollars in aid for the hardest hit countries such as Sri Lanka, where 31,000 were killed and three quarters of its coastline devastated, and Indonesia, where Aceh province was near-obliterated, India decided to go it alone.

Behind New Delhi's independent stance -- it declined emergency bilateral government aid not only for the tsunami but also for the October 8 earthquake that flattened villages in Indian-administered Kashmir -- is a wish to assert itself as a world power and shed its begging bowl image, analysts say.

"It has the economic capacity, it wants to project itself as an emerging power and play a larger role in security matters. It is seeking a seat on the UN Security Council," says Jane's Defence Weekly analyst Rahul Bedi who is based in New Delhi. "It doesn't want to be seen to be taking aid."

India raised eyebrows over its decision not to take help from Western capitals after the tsunami struck on December 26 but aid workers and experts say doubts about its ability to cope were misplaced.

"The government responded very quickly. It put up an organised effort right from the start," says New Delhi-based Oxfam spokeswoman Aditi Kapoor whose agency worked with tsunami victims.

India, which has the second-fastest growing major economy, insisted it was financially able to handle the domestic impact of the tsunami but it did allow non-governmental agencies to pitch in.

"We're proud to bear this burden (of relief)," Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said at the time of the tsunami which left 16,389 dead or missing in India.

At the same time, India is taking soft loans from multilateral lenders for longer term recovery, including nearly 530 million dollars from the World Bank, for repairing houses and reviving fishermens' livelihoods.

In its biggest-ever peacetime relief operation, India sent over 4,000 troops to disaster areas, air-dropped food and dispatched its 140-ship navy, coastal craft and other vessels to deliver medical aid and relief supplies.

India's assessment "is that (immediate) rescue and relief work is a task that India is better equipped to undertake on its own," says Uday Bhaskar of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

Also, with India's economy on an unprecedented roll, creating new affluence among many, countless numbers in the country of over one billion people joined a cathartic rush to donate to the thousands of tsunami victims.

In fact, V. Vivekanandan, chief executive of South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies called it "the most oversubscribed disaster in the history of India. There's an oversupply of aid."

The biggest problem has been aid distribution.

K. Aniyappan, a fisherman, who lives in temporary shack along the Tamil Nadu coast which was devastated by the tsunami, says the aid he received was too little to sustain his seven-member family.

"First they gave 5,000 rupees (108 dollars) as compensation for house damage," Aniyappan says. "Then came the next batch of 3,000 rupees." Today he said they were getting nothing "and we eke out a day-to-day living".

"There's no doubt some aid could have been better managed and things better done, but that had nothing to do with whether India accepted money from foreign governments," says a senior aid worker who asked not to be identified.

With the growth in the economy since India began opening up to foreign investors 15 years ago, "India can no longer lay claim to being one of the poorest of the poor," says Saumitra Choudhuri, chief economic advisor to leading Indian credit rating agency ICRA.

"The government has the money and more importantly the infrastracture to deliver," says Ahok Prasad, an Oxfam spokesman in the southern city of Madras.

India's economy grew 8.0 percent in the second quarter and its foreign reserves now stand at around 130 billion dollars with money flooding into its financial markets.

India has always been prickly about being dependent about foreign aid.

"We donors have to be very sensitive in dealing with India but taking aid for the most vulnerable is not a dependency," says another senior aid official who did not wish to be quoted.

New Delhi officially decided two years ago to wean the country from foreign handouts as part of its drive to project itself as an emerging global power.

India now takes government-to-government help from only the Group of Eight most industrialized countries that include Britain, the US and Russia. It has told 20-odd other donor countries to channel funds directly through non-governmental organisations, charities or UN agencies.

"India believes much more in trade than aid," said Azmat Ulla, head of the delegation for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

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