India, which is still one of the poorest nations, despite high-technology successes, may welcome long-term offers of financial help to rebuild tsunami-hit coastal areas at next week's meeting of World Bank and other donors in Geneva, said Uday Bhaskhar, head of the Indian Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis.
But India's naval deployment underscores to world powers its growing economic and military claim to join China with a seat on the United Nations Security Council, said Rahul Bedi, New Delhi-based analyst for Jane's Defence Weekly.
"The naval deployment is a humanitarian effort and achieves a political objective to say India has moved from a beggar state to a financially secure one," Bedi said.
"It's not threatening, but there's also a subtle military signal that India is welcome in the region and China is not."
At a meeting last week in Jakarta, India's Foreign Minister Natwar Singh highlighted India's ability to help out in the region.
"We are happy to place the strengths of the Indian navy for use in humanitarian relief in the region," Singh told the meeting organized by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
India has been working on forging wider trade links with the countries including sending Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the most recent heads of state meeting in Laos.
"India's navy has long-standing ties to ASEAN through regular port visits and patrols so it's natural that in the first phase of rescue and relief, they would welcome the capabilities the navy clearly has in those areas," Bhaskhar said.
India's military is used to being deployed to help out in domestic disasters such as the 2002 earthquake in western Gujarat state that killed 20,000 and in UN relief efforts.
But this is the first time the country unilaterally sent large-scale aid to other countries and shows a "new military and economic" confidence in playing a regional role, particularly with ASEAN countries leery of China's growing military and economic power, Bedi said.
In its biggest-ever peace-time relief operation, India has dispatched over 4,000 troops to disaster areas. It has also air-dropped food and used its 140-ship navy, coastal craft and other vessels to deliver medical aid and tonnes of relief supplies.
It sent four ships to Sri Lanka, three to the Maldives and two to Indonesia with supplies and support immediately after the tsunami.
The wall of water triggered by an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra December 26 hit 10 countries, including India, killing more than 150,000 people.
India turned down offers of emergency aid saying it was financially able to handle the domestic impact with almost 16,000 people killed or missing in four southern states and the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands 1,600 kilometers from the mainland.
But the country said aid for rebuilding would be welcome.
"We're proud to bear this burden (of relief)," Finance Minister P Chidambaram said in Bombay.
But "longer-term reconstruction and rehabilitation, which will also involve investments in upgrading the infrastructure in the affected areas ... requires greater investment and project-based funding."
The government has assessed mainland damage at 1.6 bln usd. While there is no bill for the battered Andaman Islands, preliminary reports put the tally at nearly 600 mln usd.
India's navy has done joint sea patrols with the US through the Straits of Malacca, one of the world's busiest sea routes and strategically important for oil shipments from the Gulf to Asia.
"India has a blue water navy fully capable of deploying in such situations because it has a lot of experience with disaster relief," Bedi said.
"China with a bigger navy would be more hesitant because politically, particularly in ASEAN countries, a military deployment wouldn't be welcome."
Bhaskhar said India's naval deployment would help underpin India's bid for UN Security Council membership sometime in the future.
"That's not something India would make a point about now for Security Council membership -- that will be left to diplomats down the road," he said.
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