Russia remains India's largest supplier of defence and strategic equipment. It is important the relationship strengthens in other areas too to avoid a slow burnout.The Russian Ambassador to New Delhi said all the right things. Russia, he insisted, remained India's BFF (best friend forever for the uninitiated) despite its recent flirtation with Pakistan. But it will take a lot more than mere protestations of undying love to convince New Delhi that its ties with Moscow are still what they were at the peak of the Indo-Soviet romance during the Cold War.After all, weren't crack Russian combat troops conducting Druzhba2016 exercises with Pakistani troops in Pakistan precisely at that time when Pakistani terrorists were attacking an Indian military camp at Uri Adding insult to injury, India's ties with Russia were dubbed Druzhba Dosti in 2014.In private conversations, Indian policy makers have a litany of complaints against the Russians. From delayed supplies to sub-standard spares for critical defence equipment to sudden and capricious increases in the prices of defence platforms, the list is long.[caption id="attachment_10526" align="alignleft" width="246"]

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin with Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj[/caption]But despite that, and in spite of losing some ground to the US and Israel over the last decade, Russia remains, by far, the largest supplier of defence and strategic equipment to India. The same Indian mandarins who find fault with the quality of Russian spares also have no hesitation in admitting that Moscow is the only source in the world that will give India access to strategic assets like leased nuclear submarines.It is because of this that India has walked the extra mile to protect its special relationship with Russia. Leading Indian politicians readily admit that despite its newfound friendship with the US and Japan, Moscow is still the first phone call the Prime Minister or the Foreign Minister make when India is faced with a crisis.Aware that even the closest of friendships can do with a little bit of commerce to keep things warm, India has signed contracts for two more nuclear reactors with Russia for Kudankulam, will buy and make under license 226 Kamov helicopters, the S-400 Triumf air defence system (widely accepted as the world's best, far superior to anything in the US armoury) and a few more Sukhoi 30 fighters.These will keep Moscow and New Delhi interested in each other for several years into the future but will not be able to change the underlying reality that both countries have moved light years away from their positions during and the immediate aftermath of the Cold War when they were genuinely BFF.But economic and people-to-people ties, which provide the real ballast to any international relationship, are conspicuous by their absence in the case of India and Russia. Speak to any Indian industrialist off the record and he will hold forth on how difficult it is for foreigners to do business in Russia.And unlike in the past, when followers of a particular political ideology went in droves to study in the erstwhile Soviet Union and later, Russia, this pipeline of ideologically driven students has dried up. So has the flow of Indian tourists.The non-defence economic relationship between India and Russia is almost entirely driven by the public sector - mainly in the oil and gas sector. ONGC Videsh has invested in several oil fields in the Russian far west and Rosneft has recently acquired the Essar Group's refinery assets. That apart, the trade in diamonds, which is now dominated globally by the Gujarati community, is the only other bright spot in Indo-Russian ties.But to be entirely honest, it will be unfair to blame Russia entirely for the state of drift in bilateral ties. Over the last decade, India has moved progressively closer to the US and West even as Russia has increasingly come under Beijing's influence. Many experts in New Delhi on Russia, especially those who cut their teeth in foreign policy during the Cold War point this out with wistfulness and a degree of bitterness.Unlike the situation just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, China is clearly ahead on almost all counts except military technology. So, it is almost natural for a Russia, hit by Western sanctions, to move closer to China, which is flush with money that Moscow so desperately needs.Of course, a lot of this has to do with short sighted US policies - like pushing NATO's boundaries westward right up to Russia's borders and trying to punish Moscow for trying to retain its sphere of influence in the erstwhile Eastern Bloc as it did when Putin ordered his army to annex Crimea.Make no mistake. Russia is today China's junior partner. It has bought Beijing's narrative on the East and South China Sea, Central Asia (formerly part of the USSR and later considered Russia's sphere of influence) without so much as a question and has even supplied China's JF-17 fighter planes with the same engines that power Russia's MiG 29 and MiG 35 jets.Just as a nominally non-aligned India got drawn into the Soviet Union's corner, because of the helping hand it offered on a number of crucial issues, so also, a post-Cold War Russia, increasingly dependent on Chinese money, could well find itself on the side of China on major international issues. And this could, willy nilly, place it in a position where it will find itself ranged against its old ally India.Here, mandarins in India's foreign office will be hoping that US President-elect Donald Trump's expected outreach to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will be enough to stop Moscow from aligning itself completely with Beijing's world view.Here, Modi could even offer to be the bridge between the two sides, much like the role Pakistan played in the early 1970s when Henry Kissinger reached out to Mao's China and changed the dynamics of the Cold War decisively in Washington's favour.That will be a best case scenario for India. Anything else will leave it forever trying to balance its ties with the US and Russia, even as the latter gets drawn into an embrace with Islamabad as a sub-set of its relationship with Beijing.A retired diplomat summed up India's relationship with Russia by comparing it to old lovers, who, having moved on to newer interests, still retain warm feelings for each other. Modi and Putin must now focus on rekindling that old flame or risk it slowly burning out forever.