By agreeing to White House initiative of Quad Leadership Summit, Narendra Modi throws away ages old Non-alignment Mask that India has been wearing since Nehru days.

There are obvious dangers in appearing as fundamentally opposed to China and being in Team USA as far as geopolitics is concerned, but seems, out of no options, and with Quad being a robust platform, Narendra Modi decides not to wear the Non-alignment mask and clearly aligning Indian interests with the American interests

One of the major reasons of this shift in policy is triggered by Sino-Ruso relationship, Russia's constant critique over Quad, and Russia softening it's stance over Pakistan.

The larger part of India's non-alignment was due to Nehru's love for Moscow-driven socialism, which miserably failed in 1991 and India was forced to reform it's economy to survive.

With the rise of China and strict global restrictions on Russia from UN, US & EU, Russian economy has been one of the weakest among big nations. Russia needed a formidable partner to support it's economy while offering military leverages in return.

Applying "Enemy's enemy is a friend" policy, Russia started cooling down its relationship ever since Vladimir Putin took over. However, it did not affect the Indo-Ruso relationship until President Trump took over in 2016 and started massive pushback against Chinese coercions.

As US was hardening it's stance against China, Russia tilted more towards China. Under the influence of China, Russia started supporting Pakistani aspirations and begun to remain absence at global platforms instead of supporting India, which it has always done. As recently as 3 days back, at the behest of Pakistan, Russia tried to marginalized India from the Afghanistan peace conference.

The 70 years old friendship is seen to have lost the grip of the relationship. India's balancing act in buying military hardware from the US as well as Russia did not go well with Russia despite the fact that India still is the largest buyer of Russian military equipment and partners on range of projects.

As Russian opposition to India being a Quad member became obvious, New Delhi felt it's necessary to align with the actual superpower.