New Delhi’s cumbersome responses in these cases reflect

 New Delhi’s cumbersome responses in these cases reflect the government’s policy drift—a critical inability to overcome domestic hurdles to swift policy implementation. For example, the first detailed case study Basrur examines involves the monumental 2008 U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement, which separated India’s civilian and military nuclear reactors and placed the former under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. The accord effectively legitimized India’s clandestine nuclear weapons program by enabling India to participate in global nuclear commerce, which contributed significantly to a rapprochement in U.S.-India relations. Despite the agreement’s obvious strategic benefits for India, Basrur writes that the negotiations quickly became mired in India’s domestic politics.

Specifically, India’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) opposed the deal, even though it had few reservations about a closer security partnership with the United States and had carried out India’s 1998 nuclear tests. In opposing the agreement, it hoped to score political points against the coalition government. Meanwhile, the Indian nuclear establishment slowed the negotiations, raising dubious and polemical objections. The agreement almost fell through as a result. In the end, then-Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh finalized the treaty through a fraught two-level negotiating strategy—one with his domestic interlocutors and another with the United States.

The debate over the civilian nuclear agreement reflects a case of involuntary policy drift: A weak and fractious coalition government faced unexpected hostility from its principal opposition. By contrast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government today has an overwhelming parliamentary majority; it is mostly subject to voluntary policy drift attributed to its own inefficiency.