Pakistanis get the military they don't deserve and we get an opposition that we don't deserve.
Both these groups end up by being obstructionists whose only hope to remain relevant is through their negativism.
Pakistan's politicians ceded space to the military and Islamists in the hope of retaining power with their help and were proven wrong. Indian politicians tried to ghettoise and sectionalise the country in order to create vote banks. They too were wrong.
The opposition in India now consists of unauthorised squatters in houses they should have vacated years ago, is not only becoming irrelevant but also obnoxious with these antics.
The route from irrelevance to redundancy and then on to ridicule, is not very long. But the impression of wrongful entitlement that such lawlessness leaves on others is permanent and that is dangerous for the country.
A country that wants to function without the rule of law or where laws are defied by the powerful, is on its way to becoming a banana republic.
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The state too failed the people. When it stopped supplying water, the people or, some people, sunk tube wells; when the state stopped supplying electricity they installed generators.
When the state stopped providing daily security they employed their own security and got into gated communities. When the government hospitals became inadequate and incompetent, the people organized their fancy expensive technology friendly state of the art commercial hospitals.
All this of course has been by the rich and powerful for the rich and powerful. The poor simply stayed where they were, poor.
By all accounts, Narendra Modi has done a fairly good job in his first hundred days. This is especially so in strengthening relations with India's immediate neighbours from Afghanistan to Vietnam where he and his EAM Sushma Swaraj have worked in close tandem.
There is a quantum jump and a qualitative shift in India's relations with Japan, Australia and China. True Xi Jinping did not give India an investment of USD 100 billion but this was never a realistic figure anyway.
A country that has invested USD 80 billion globally was never going to offer USD 100 billion FDI to India. This was typical media hype which then blamed the government for not fulfilling media dreams.
We can expect a similar crescendo up to the visit to the US and then again wise commentaries of how the promised deals did not come through.
Ahead of the visit to the United States, there will be psywar games played by interested groups saying Narendra Modi's time is up and he has not delivered.
He need not be hustled into decisions in the US. The announcement that the US will sell 160 MRAPs to Pakistan at this juncture prior to the visit is actually better for us.
It allows an opportunity to pause and rethink even though the equipment is of dubious value and frightfully expensive to use. If the U.S. can sell F16 aircraft for counter insurgency then why not MRAPs?
Both are usable against India. If nothing else, this should ground our feet about what to expect from the U.S. visit. Prime Minister Modi's economic vision will thus emerge more clearly once he has shored up his relationship and investment prospects with the Big Three, Japan, China and lastly, the U.S.
Domestically, Narendra Modi's main problem is going to have to muzzle the loudmouths in his party and its Hindutva brigades. Others seem anxious to give PM Modi only 100 days to prove himself.
This is grossly unfair in a country of a billion plus population with all its aspirations and complications that is recovering from a decade of scams and misgovernance.
There are references to a lack of talent and experience in the Cabinet; well we elected them and the so-called talented and experienced persons either lost or did not contest. We deal with what we have by giving them a reasonable chance.
Talent is no longer the preserve of elegant salons of India's metropolises or the high born. India is changing and it is best to harness the new energy well.
No one, no sensible Indian, except some churlish Congressmen, can find fault with Narendra Modi's reply to Fareed Zakaria when asked about Al Qaeda and Indian Muslims. In fact it made me, as an Indian, proud of what and how he said it. It was for me, a reaffirmation of faith and an assertion in self-confidence that the state will remain secular and it is now up to us to remain tolerant.
And even more heartening was the positive support Indians like Amir Raza Hussain gave to PM Modi's comment. So did a lot of other Muslim leaders and it does make one feel that we are on the right track and that once again we will surprise the world that perennially expects us to explode. The strength of a nation lies in how it treats its minorities.
Our problem may not be the people, but may lie with its leaders, political and bureaucratic. What the people need is leadership by example not by slogans. The people know jugaad and can survive on that.
But the country needs leaders and amenities that will take them beyond jugaad to genuine innovation and enterprise. The people need laws they will abide by and not laws they are forced to circumvent.
The people need to know that hard work and discipline will be rewarded instead of through entitlements and ghettoised survival, where the only progress for an individual was to have himself declared backward. True emancipation of the nation and its soul will come when we have learnt to treat our women - about 50 percent of our population - with respect and equality. This will be our biggest collective challenge if we want to make a mark on the world stage.
It is far better, any day, to have a pro-active government that makes its mistakes than to have ten years of inaction embellished by scams that leads you to the doldrums anyway.
Mr. Vikram Sood is an adviser to the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation and a former Secretary, Research and Analysis Wing.
