Pakistan can be counted upon to provide New Delhi with ample opportunities to divert attention from other challenges and embarrassments as well as reinforce its muscular nationalist credentials. Three days after a cross-border strike killed four Indian soldiers, Army commandoes evened the score by crossing into Pakistan; this claim of surgical strike Lite, although made by anonymous Army officials, has to be taken at face value. This approach, in effect, suggests the government will henceforth bank on strong armed means to bring Pakistan to heel or the negotiating table. The hand of the partisan crowd in South Block would have been strengthened by their weak hand in the Jadhav case.The government’s spin masters have performed wonderfully in turning a tactical blunder in the Jadhav case around into one of wounded national pride: Pakistan had set an impossibly short deadline for New Delhi to decide whether it would allow Jadhav’s mother and wife to meet him in Islamabad; once the duo was in Pakistan, its authorities controlled the narrative for the benefit of its domestic audience as well as show up India as an abettor of terrorism. Islamabad can be depended upon to extract the maximum mileage from the jailed Indian as well as keep the border hot. New Delhi will have to fall back on the only option left in its quiver — match each Pakistani military misadventure with one of its own. This strategy will keep the hawks in India contented — just like the verbal skirmishing over Jadhav’s mulakat activated their counterparts in Pakistan — but is hardly an end in itself.On the other hand, this all-consuming entanglement with the neighbour is not raising India’s profile. The lesson from the Doklam standoff with China is salutary: no neighbour was awed by India’s military “resolve”; in fact, some exhibit a more independent streak since then. They will be less impressed by India’s inability to manage its ties with Pakistan. The lopsidedness in India’s strategic outlook needs urgent correction: a much-sought ally by the big powers for its market and military potential but with an overbearing image of a schoolyard bully in the immediate neighbourhood.