New Delhi, Sept. 28 -- Nearly eight decades after the partition of British India, Indians and Pakistanis still view one another with deep suspicion-and their perceptions of the wider world are increasingly divergent as well. New data collected by the Pew Research Center offer a revealing snapshot of how people across South Asia view their neighbours, major powers like the United States and China, and India's growing global role. To unpack what these findings tell us about South Asian and global public opinion, Pew's Jacob Poushter joined host Milan Vaishnav on last week's episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Poushter is the lead author of a recent Pew report titled, "India and Pakistan: Rivals with Divergent Views of the Global Order." He is an associate director at the Pew Research Center, where he helps manage its flagship annual Global Attitudes Survey. Poushter and Vaishnav spoke about the work of the Pew Research Center, the hardened views Indians and Pakistanis hold towards one another, and the two neighbours' views of the great powers. They also discussed how India is viewed elsewhere in the neighbourhood and where India's standing has experienced a significant decline. In Pew's recent survey of the region, Indians and Pakistanis named the other country as their top security threat. In India, 54% of respondents saw Pakistan as the country's top threat, while 43% of Pakistanis felt the same about India. "When you look at whether the countries have a favourable view of each other, only around 7 or 8% in each country said they had a favorable opinion of the other," said Poushter. "That's pretty low; in public opinion, when you get below the 10% level, you are talking about pretty high disapprovals in both countries." When it comes to their respective partners, 36% of Indians say Russia is their most important ally, while the United States comes next, at 16%. Pakistan, by contrast, is overwhelmingly pro-China, said Poushter. "Across our 37 countries, they are among the most positive towards China," he noted. By contrast, only about 23% of Indians have a favourable view of China. Poushter said India is "one of maybe three or four countries in our entire survey with a more positive view of the US than of China." This runs counter to global trends, with many countries becoming more positive toward China while views of the US have dimmed-a marked change from prior years. When it comes to the rest of the world, Poushter singled out Sri Lanka as a place where views of India are especially positive: 79% of Sri Lankans have a favourable view of India, among the highest shares in the world. Across the full set of countries surveyed, India enjoys a 51% favourability rating, with 45% holding a negative view. India's rating is much more positive in the United Kingdom, Kenya, and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, but views are considerably more negative in several Muslim-majority countries, including Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Poushter warned that it is difficult to disentangle the views people hold of countries from their views of their leaders. "There could be some effect where people are thinking more about the leader than the country itself. When it comes to Putin, Trump, Xi, [and Modi], you see this connection between the leader and the country's image. It will be interesting to see what people think about the Prime Minister and how that might change in future years."...