India's prime minister-elect Mr Manmohan Singh laid out his vision for the world's largest democracy today, vowing to help the poor, foster investment and secure peace with Pakistan.
"There are a lot of challenges ahead of us [but] the priority ... will be to do everything needed to wage the battle against poverty," Mr Singh said at his first news conference since President Abdul Kalam asked him yesterday to form a government.
His message on the poor was a key ingredient to his Congress party pulling of a surprise general election win this month when threw out the government headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for failing to pass on the benefits of India's economic boom.
His plan largely follows the reforms he initiated as finance minister in the early 1990s.
But promising change with a human touch, Singh softened the BJP's privatisation programme, pledging not to sell state banks or energy giants Oil and Natural Gas Corp and GAIL India - two of the former government's "nine gems".
Mr Singh said his Congress party-led secular coalition, expected to take power on Saturday, would also foster a pro-investment climate, which in turn required securing lasting peace with nuclear rival Pakistan.
"We must find ways and means to resolve all outstanding problems that have been a source of friction and the unfortunate history of our relations with Pakistan," said Mr Singh, who was born in what is now Pakistan. "We should look to the future with hope".
With the defeat of the Hindu nationalist BJP, Singh said he would let the courts settle India's hottest Hindu-Muslim row - over a small holy plot in the northern town of Ayodhya - and appealed for communal peace.
"Communal harmony... must be strengthened at any cost," he said. "If the effort to divide the country on the lines of caste and religion continues then the country's unity is in danger."
Mr Singh was unexpectedly catapulted into the prime minister's job after Congress leader Ms Sonia Gandhi refused to seek the post amid objections over her Italian birth.
Ms Gandhi made her decision despite public and party pressure for her to ignore complaints led by the BJP.
The 57-year-old the wife of assassinated former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and standard-barer of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, had led Congress though the election campaign.
Tomorrow is the 13th anniversary of the her husband's murder by a suicide bomber.