What's so great about this is that India has had a horrendous image problem for decades of being one of the poorest countries on Earth. Now 50 years after Ghandi's assination and their freedom from colonial rule the world's largest democracy is making great strides to being not only self-sufficient but a respectable regional power.
I can't help but feel good that a billion people in a democracy and no tradition of self determination and free markets has made such giant strides in my lifetime. It's really great to see. I would say the same thing about China but you know, they have that nagging Communism problem.
Good job India, your success in the world is being noticed by people in the West.
What is more astounding about India is that last few years we have had a spate of crisis starting from Gujrat earthquake, droughts, floods, border tension, terrorist attacks and now this. And inspite of all this, every successive year the economy keeps booming unlike everbefore and is attracting more jobs and foreign investments. Now it seems there is no turning back.
Why has our relationship with India been . . . uhhh . . . testy in the past? I've never understood that. They're the world's largest Democracy, right? Or close if they're not. It would seem we would be made for each other.
I've heard the Cold War theory . . . that we needed an ally close to the Soviet Union and Pakistan was willing to fill the void. Because of their difficulties with each other . . . Pakistan and India . . . India then sort of had no choice but to drift more toward the Soviet Union than us. Then we virtually ignored them until they exploded the atomic bomb in the late 90's and Pee Wee Clinton had no choice but to take note of them.
The above is usually given as the answer.
In your opinion, is that why we've never been closer allies? I've always been looking for some social or cultural reasons that made sense for the differences.
There just has to be more to it than we picked Pakistan as an ally and India won't be our friends just because Pakistan and India don't play nice with each other.
Maybe that's all there is to it. Maybe when the Soviet Union collapsed India found itself left hanging alone in the breeze so they had no choice but to reach out to us . . . then Slick Willy got scared when they dropped the bomb so we finally took their out-stretched hand.
What's your opinion?