India waits and watches as Trump swings between praise and threat

India is in no hurry to respond to the latest flurry of mixed signals coming out of Washington, with policymakers in New Delhi acutely aware of US President Donald Trump's temperamental swings and his tendency to combine praise with pressure.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

Officials here believe Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Saturday's courteous acknowledgement of Trump's recent remarks, and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar's subsequent comments, should be read as protocol politeness rather than a substantive shift.

It is also understood in Delhi that Trump has come to view India's reluctance to accept a one-sided trade deal not merely as a policy disagreement but as a personal affront that is being attributed to multiple reasons.

That perception has complicated matters further, because the path to resolution now rests less on routine negotiation and more on the US President's own willingness to recalibrate.

For India, this means the wait-and-watch approach is likely to continue, with courtesy extended in public but no hasty concessions, while much of the effort to mend the rift will ultimately have to come from Trump himself.

Amidst the threats and rhetoric, India has quietly consolidated its ground with both China and Russia even as Trump has turned the screws with tariffs and public admonitions, and the government appears determined not to walk into a one-sided bargain of the kind Washington recently extracted from Japan.

While a prominent section of Delhi's bureaucracy, political class, the media and business lobbies are pressing for a rapprochement with the US—many driven by commercial and personal stakes—the prevailing mood is to wait and watch, letting the noise settle before any serious engagement.