For Washington, an ideal India would be one that: leases military bases to the US, purchases-35s, offers near unlimited military interoperability, rapidly retires Russian equipment, operates on GPS, refuses to build its own LLMs, spends next to nothing on indigenous R&D, buys American oil and LNG, cedes large parts of the North East to a sovereign Kuki-Zo state, restores Article 370, encourages immigration of Bangladeshis into the country, and allows unfettered access to foreign missionary groups. Wonder how many points on this list have been mentioned by the podcast guest.
When Prof Raja Mohan was asked about India’s concerns/expectations of the US, he listed all US disappointments/grouses with India, invoking BRICS, multipolarity rhetoric etc. He thinks nobody notices that he’s found criticising the latter while staying entirely mum on the former.