The travel magazines capture an arresting picture: A bright red sun shining over the Ganges as people wade in from its banks, their dark bodies swaddled in the barest clothing. And that picture still captures much of India, which remains a very rural country.

But its big cities are booming, much like those of China, and like China, India enjoys a new and growing middle class sprung from the new industries that have sprung up or flocked there in recent years.

That's led to a thriving media, with new publications launching and more and more foreign titles flooding in to get a piece of India's rising consumer economy as their own markets sag.

Earlier this week Conde Nast launched an Indian version of GQ, and it follows a long list of magazines from the U.S. and Britain in particular that have launched Indian editions, including the Economist, Vogue, Rolling Stone and FHM.

India is particularly attractive to British and U.S. publishers because English remains the language of business and the educated classes.

And of course all this comes amid a major media slowdown worldwide as the global economy suffers the heaves of the credit crisis and other woes. Ad forecasts for the U.S. and other developed media markets for 2008 and 2009 make for grim reading.

But India is expected to escape entirely, enjoying continued surges in ad spending: 20 percent in 2008, to $5.6 billion, and 19 percent in 2009, to $6.6 billion, according to GroupM, the global media buying shop. By 2009, India will become the world’s 15th largest advertising market, up from 26th place in 2000, it predicts.

It will account for one in 20 new ad dollars in 2009, making it the third-largest contributor among the developing countries, after China and Russia.

"There are several very strong organic drivers in this market, which give it very good insulation from the wider global economy,” says Adam Smith, futures director at GroupM in London.

One is the growing wealth of the country. By 2025, India is expected to have a bigger upper middle class than China.

What’s more, demographically it will be the youngest of the three big industrializing countries by a long way. Currently it has a median age of 25, which is expected to rise to 31 by 2027. That compares to 34, rising to 40 for China, and 38, rising to 43 for Russia.

The second key driver is the vibrancy of the country’s traditional media, says Smith.

“This is caused by literacy, urbanization and investment opportunities for both domestic and foreign companies.”

The country has been relaxing restrictions that limit the ownership positions that foreign countries can have in media. Magazines that aren’t news titles can now be 100 percent foreign owned.

The third driver is that advertisers are broadening their target audience, moving away from the focus on the housewife as the chief advertising target.

But there is a downside. While the number of local editions of international magazine titles is increasing rapidly, the amount of advertising money being spent isn’t. As such the magazine market isn’t growing as quickly as some other sectors in the market.

GroupM forecasts 12 percent growth for the magazine sector in 2008, to hit $175.9 million, and about 5 percent growth in 2009. “It is chockablock with new launches, but advertising money isn’t rising,” says Smith.

That compares to the newspaper category, which GroupM forecasts will grow 18 percent in 2008 to $2.36 billion and another 18 percent in 2009.

That's already led to a flood of foreign newspapers planting new roots in India.

Last November, Britain's Daily Mail, the UK’s second-largest daily newspaper, launched Mail Today, a new English-language daily with an initial target circulation of 120,000.