India’s security ties with the United States have traditionally commanded attention within the broader context of India’s foreign affairs. Although Indo-US security cooperation has matured over the last two decades in quantitative and qualitative terms, it takes a few dull moments for commentators to write the obituary of India-US relations. The oscillation between the extremes of “strong ties” and “frosty relations” makes it difficult to grasp the real-world complexities or the underlying phenomenon at play.

The most recent Summit-level meeting of the four Quad nations—Australia, Japan, India, and the United States—in March 2023 began with a familiar refrain: “Our meeting today reaffirms the Quad’s steadfast commitment to supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific.” 

In an interesting part of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864), the protagonist (an ordinary clerk), distraught at being dehumanized and treated like “an invisible” by a high-ranking officer, decides to take revenge. He spends months trying to plot the perfect way to get back at the officer before coming up with “the most marvellous” idea: to confront the officer on Nevsky Prospect, a central street in St. Petersburg, where the clerk often spotted—and had stepped aside for—the officer in the past.

Microfinance, the practice of lending to groups of vulnerable women without collateral, continues to dominate India’s financial news. Sizable new investments in the sector come from both domestic and global capital sources.

In 1998, Japan vehemently criticized India’s nuclear tests and imposed tough economic sanctions. Though India and Japan established diplomatic relations in 1952, the relations had picked up only in the post-Cold War era and these Indian nuclear tests hit the fledgling relations very badly. Since then, much water has flowed down the Ganga and the bilateral relations soon picked up after then-Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori’s landmark visit to India in 2000.