The world may expect great things from India, but as extensive reporting reveals, Indians themselves turn out to be deeply skeptical about their country's potential. That attitude, plus New Delhi's dysfunctional foreign-policy bureaucracy, prevent long-term planning of the sort China has mastered -- and are holding India back.

Just a few years ago, India seemed on the brink of becoming the world's next great power. Today, its future appears less certain.

Two recent books reveal the ugly underbelly of India's success story. A vast gulf has opened up between the rich and the poor, corruption suffuses every aspect of life, and the country's political leaders lack the vision needed to turn this would-be world power into an actual one.

India is planning to buy $100 billion worth of new weapons over the next ten years.

Many comparisons of India and Pakistan attribute India's democracy to Hinduism and Pakistan's autocracy to Islam.

The Chinese and Indian economies often elicit breathless admiration from commentators. In fact, domestic deficiencies and regional tensions mean that the rise of China and India is hardly assured.

The future of the U.S.-Indian relationship will depend on whether India chooses to align with the United States and whether it sustains its own economic and social changes -- and on what policies Washington pursues in those areas that bear heavily on Indian interests.

The BJP's Hindu nationalism may have won it votes in the past, but the party now faces an identity crisis that is imperiling its future.

Already the world's preeminent energy and trade interstate seaway, the Indian Ocean will matter even more as India and China enter into a dynamic great-power rivalry in these waters.

How new deals in the developing world will change the global economy.

The nuclear deal between Washington and New Delhi may have run into trouble, but the future of bilateral relations between the two countries should still be bright. In this article, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns explains the logic of the Bush administration's passage to India.

The Indian economy is booming -- but the boom will last only as long as the vagaries of Indian democratic politics allow it to. Democracy and market reform are uneasily aligned in India today, and the additional reforms necessary to raise the lot of India's poor masses -- who have enormous voting clout -- may not garner a popular mandate at the ballot box. Although a long-term asset, democracy could prove to be a short-term headache for India's reformers.

Carter's update to his July/August 2006 essay "America's New Strategic Partner?"

The debate over a new anti-corruption law in India highlights political dysfunction in New Delhi and distracts from the larger issue of an urgent need for economic reforms.