India's youth is its greatest promise and problem: if skills and productive work can be found for most of its 600 million people under the age of 27, India will join the US and China as one of the world's three giant economies.

If not, India's internal problems of unmet expectations and resource pressures will become a big part of the woes of the world.

Strategically, India combines resilience with insecurity. If China's economy and authoritarian system ever fail, they will fail spectacularly.

India fails one way or another every day, but its diversity and democracy – and perhaps cultural factors too – prove the toughest of shock-absorbers.

Indeed, scanning the horizon from Brexit to Trump to Putin, Syria and North Korea, India looks like one of the less chaotic parts of the globe. Simply by improving the prospects for its own population, India is making a major contribution to the global good.

India does not let incessant terrorism goad it into destabilising action, yet it harbours almost zero trust for its two nuclear-armed neighbours, Pakistan and China, with which it has fought wars and which co-operate to constrain its rise.

All of this means that in New Delhi, Mr Turnbull will face challenges and opportunities quite unlike those that accompanied the Chinese Premier to Canberra a fortnight ago.

Australia and India face an unfamiliar test. Quite simply, for the first time, these two nations have an almost complete absence of trouble between them.


That is good news. But it also lends less urgency to prioritising one another on fast-filling diplomatic dance-cards.

There's not much to argue about any more. Differences over Cold War alignment, nuclear issues or alleged racism against Indian students are now well in the past.

Instead, here are two democracies with largely convergent interests, especially on matters of security and society.

Both are committed to thwarting terrorism and jihadist ideology, and could benefit from more fulsome exchange of experience, insights and intelligence. Australia could be an invaluable partner in helping India develop its special forces capabilities.

At the geostrategic level, neither wants to see their shared Indo-Pacific region dominated by one power. The Chinese navy is making its presence increasingly felt beyond the South China Sea and into the Indian Ocean.

The Australian and Indian navies ought to be natural partners in these waters, learning to train and operate together and routinely to share awareness on everything from piracy to people smuggling to submarines.

Understanding Modi's strategic diplomacy is an important counterpoint to the one-dimensional narrative that Asian geopolitics is all about China versus the US.

Notably, Modi's India seems broadly comfortable with American power – regardless of who is at the helm – and Australia can see its US alliances as overwhelmingly a diplomatic asset in engaging with this part of Asia.


But the most significant diplomatic conversation on the day Donald Trump was elected last November was probably the long summit between Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The new Tokyo-Delhi alignment includes Japanese technology and infrastructure in India and rapidly expanding naval co-operation.

Indeed, in hedging around uncertainties about the US as well as against Chinese power, Australia would do well to deepen its three-way dialogue and co-operation with India and Japan.

Australia can and should be a defence technology partner for India. That Australia and India are both now vital French defence industry partners provides one foundation for some possible trilateral collaboration.

Another arises from the fact that Australia, India and France are key security players in the Indian Ocean – between them, controlling much of the island real estate that provides awareness of what is occurring in the maritime domain.

Economically, the Australia-India relationship is growing more slowly, but its powerful complementarities will become plainer. Both sides need to get beyond old fixations on coal, gold and wool, and look to the role Australian services and education can play internally in India's development.

Ultimately, Australia has profound stakes in helping India help itself and make the most of its extraordinary human capital. This is not least because people of Indian origin are our fastest-growing migrant community and make such a vital contribution to Australia's own society, prosperity and strength.

Professor Rory Medcalf is head of the National Security College at the Australian National University