John Kerry’s visit to New Delhi this week has been set up nicely by America’s chief diplomat making noises that should be pretty nice music to BJP’s ears. It’s not every day US secretaries of state approvingly quote campaign slogans of a foreign country’s ruling party.

Our desi pundits will start OD-ing on Kerry’s ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ reference, much bonhomous commentary will appear in the Indian press between now and the PM’s September visit, the American press will largely ignore India, and yet again all of us will get the fundamental issue about India-US relations completely wrong.

That issue isn’t a WTO deal, or other commercial disputes or security – it’s respect, or rather lack of respect.

America doesn’t respect India as much as it did in the early middle part of the last decade. This is the blunt truth and America’s tepid responses to and boilerplate statements on various Indian ‘concerns’ make that clear.

America, a great power, understands power with brutal clarity, and frankly India doesn’t even look like a middling power now. That’s why Washington doesn’t really respect New Delhi these days.

We screwed up the economy, on big global issues, Middle East fires, for example, we don’t have a foreign policy, our best talent still migrates as maniacally as they did in the 1960s, we can’t make anything military that’s high value and hi tech, we still look like a dangerous third world puzzle to foreign companies wanting to open shop – really, if you were world’s preeminent power would you have given India lots of respect? No.

The Prime Minister is the kind of politician who understands the world where achievement begets power and power begets respect. But his problem is that real achievement, if it comes, is at least three years away. Therefore, what he needs to do is to signal to America that his is the kind of government that understands the basics of geoeconomic and geopolitical power play – and that therefore India is now serious about a few big things.

Those big things should be 1. Big changes in business environment; this can be done in a few months 2. Big changes in foreign policy, as in if a Middle East dictator is being pilloried by his people, we should be as a democracy with the people, not with the dictator because it’s the namby pamby non-aligned thing to do; this can be done in a few days, and one suspects Modi and Sushma Swaraj are willing to do this 3. Big push for private sector domestic defence production, so that Western arms manufacturers fight to become JV partners thanks to India’s gargantuan defence orders 4. Big policy charge on education that the PM himself leads; foreign universities should be welcome and GoI should work closely with business leaders here who are spending good money on setting up universities; this can be done in a year. 5. Big revamp of Intelligence organisations aimed at demonstrating that India can play the espionage game with finesse and when required, ruthlessness; this will take three-four years, but the big signal can be send out in a few months after the first top deck reshuffle in RAW, IB, NTRO, NATGRID, etc.

If the PM can successfully communicate that he’s serious about all of these and has the power and the charisma and the drive to ram changes through, America, and then the world, will start respecting India again, taking a bet that here’s finally an Indian PM who understands India can and should be a big power. So, when you meet Americans, Mr Modi, get them to start respecting again.