Containing, and cheering, India

The great unspoken dilemma in the India-US relationship is that the US wishes to simultaneously cheer, and contain, India.

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This is not often spoken about in stark terms, but perhaps it is time. The US-India relationship is, and perhaps for many years, in some form or the other, has been stuck on one fundamental question-how does the United States wish to approach India? The early years of jostling, disillusionment suspicion, accusations of betrayal, but also, later, more recently, deep, critical cooperation, and vital change of mood with the civil nuclear deal etc., is well-known, as is the difficult dynamics between the US, India, Pakistan, and Russia.

India's rise was always inevitable on paper, but intermittent in practice.

There was a certain ennui until even a few years ago and phraseology about "the elephant learning to dance, or even move".

Therefore, it was easier to perhaps manage India.

But things have changed as India's per capita income doubled in the last decade, and it started to show serious ambition in, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi had defined, becoming a leading power, not just a balancing one.

Now this would work easily for the US, and the rest of the West which takes cues from the US, if India agreed to be a classic ally. Its size and strength, and market scale, would make it invaluable especially as a bulwark against China in Asia. But India has, and does, insist on strategic autonomy. This makes the relationship, from time-to-time, tetchy and turbulent, even though as the two largest democracies in the world, India and the US are in, many ways, natural partners.

That the US now faces a real challenge with China as a compelling competitor which is looking to outdo the US in everything from warship building to electric vehicle manufacturing has added complexity to the India-US relationship.

The US, and the West, as-sisted China's rise hoping economic success would pivot it towards democratic politics. As it turned out, this was a strikingly false assumption.