Ironically, the dream “to make America great again” became the tagline of American President Donald Trump as well, while he was seeking the mandate for presidency. Somehow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in seeking to make a “New India” and pushing his agenda of majoritarian nationalism strikes a chord with Putin. At the same time, India is veering away from Russia and getting supplanted by the US, the pious platitudes sung in favour of ‘eternal’ Indo-Russia friendship notwithstanding. Similarly, as the Russian silence on Doklam showed, India cannot have Russia any longer to counter-balance China. Russia is a very different country today than it was in 2000 when Putin first became the president.

Source: dna March 29, 2018 02:52 UTC