>>It is clear that every sign points towards the US alliance for India This isn't the future, this is where India is already. India is firmly in the US camp. U

>>It is clear that every sign points towards the US alliance for India This isn't the future, this is where India is already. India is firmly in the US camp. Upper income Indians(Upper middle class to rich) mostly derive their money from either US company based salaries, businesses or people who work in these businesses and spend money in restaurants, vacations, cars, clothing etc etc. Needless to say as of now the future of India is deeply intertwined with the future of US. NAM is not realistic for India anymore. We are already in the US camp, like it or not. So far it has worked fine for upper middle class people. A self reliant India has been tried before, and it hasn't worked. Not because the idea itself is bad or people didn't try hard enough, but there's too much domestic factionalism, corruption, selfish-to-animosity levels among various communities in India. This is beyond the fact that India as a country itself is not sure what direction it wants to head towards. Till the 1980s the direction was self-reliance, green revolution, skill and education based industrialization, urbanization, social security etc. From the 1980s the politics of India is drifting towards being a theocratic religious state. Every decade there is some major religious movement. As of now the drift has largely transformed into a very powerful current. In the last decade every single move of the government has been religious policy and law consolidation. The public itself cares little for economic or other growth. The dirty little secret of Indian political and social scene is we have wasted a record 40 years in domestic religious movements since the 1980s. In the same time, China has arrived on the world scene as a major economic, military and industrial super power. You can't afford to waste half a century(time, resources, political capital) in a highly competitive geo political ecosystem and expect to catch up with the giants(US, EU, China) overnight. Unfortunately our case isn't even as bad as our neighbors, at-least Pakistan, Afghanistan have excuses of them fighting major wars and Bangladesh was just too poor to compete. India's problems are literally our own doing. We wasted time and opportunities. India today has no options left but to ally with US/West. But it's also a double edged sword. In case of a major war with the Chinese, we will be forced to fight a war alone will all of Eurasia, all by ourselves. This could be disastrous. There are also other problems. US as an ally itself is a difficult partner to deal with. US imposes tariffs on Canada and its European allies, and threatens to cut funding to NATO. India is in a difficult situation given all these things.