Indian prime minister once said that MAGA (Make America Great Again) can also help MIGA or Make India Great Again. The end of a quarter-century-old India-US ‘strategic and global partnership’ has just been announced. Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, the deputy secretary of state of the United States, Christopher Landau, put it candidly: “The US will not give India the same kind of economic advantages it gave China. US will not allow India to become its competitor. The Trade Deal will keep ‘America First’.”
This should not come as a surprise to anyone following the India-US bilateral relationship over the past decade. The departure from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-Manmohan Singh era in the bilateral relationship began in 2017 when Donald Trump began targeting India on the trade front. The withdrawal of the Generalized Scheme of Preferences, that gave beneficial access to the US market for certain Indian exports, was the first step. While President Trump’s target was China, India suffered collateral damage.