United States President Barack Obama accomplished three important things during his visit to India last month. He put to bed a notion that held sway earlier in his administration that a US-China 'G2' could jointly manage Asia and the world. He rejected a re-hyphenation of India-Pakistan relations that many had urged on him. And he took ownership of a relationship with New Delhi that had been on the rocks since he took office. He deserves credit for expressing America's core interest in India's rise and success as a future democratic superpower.

Obama's vision of a transformative partnership with India — to manage global diplomatic and security challenges, catalyse prosperity and promote good governance in Asia and beyond — was bracing. It helped mitigate concerns in Washington that Obama does not care about the balance of power in Asia — he now does, thanks largely to China's misbehaviour over the past year. It also underlined an historic and bipartisan American belief that democracies make the best allies in world affairs.

In New Delhi, Obama made a strong case for the exceptionalism of India-US ties that would help chart the course of the 21st century. His embrace of India came just in time to check a growing chorus of pessimism in Washington. Prominent among the sceptics is George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Perkovich was an India expert before it was popular in America, so his arguments carry weight. That is why his recent Carnegie report (http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=41797) arguing that India cannot be the partner America wants it to be — and that ambitions of the kind Obama expressed for the relationship are harmful to it — deserves attention.

Perkovich argues for a more "realistic" relationship that treats India in many ways as the impoverished, isolated, defensive, even hostile-to-the-West country it once was. India does not want to be an Asian balancer, the report maintains; US efforts to facilitate India's co-equal rise with China will only create discord between Asia's giants and upset China's peaceful development. Rather than converging, the report maintains that Indian and US interests hopelessly diverge on a host of important issues, from climate change to Iran. America's embrace of India is actually detrimental — it has alienated China and Pakistan and up-ended the old nuclear order.

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