India Turns East
International Engagement and US-China Rivalry
Frederic Grare
Penguin Random House
265 pages; Rs 599
With the Narendra Modi government officially taking India into the much-debated Indo-Pacific Quad — a quadrilateral arrangement consisting of Japan, Australia, the United States and India — India’s foreign policy has perhaps taken the first substantial “Act East” step. To be sure, joining the Quad is a major departure from the past, when New Delhi was reluctant to enter into any arrangement that could be interpreted as being directed against China.
The reluctance might have been justified by pragmatism — as it is unwise to poke deliberately a more
