This discussion is amusing because I am typically on the other side of this argument: pouring cold water on the idea that India is about to leap into America's arms and abandon its engagement with Russia.
Yet one cannot simply dismiss the trend lines that have led various over-enthusiastic commentators to embrace this idea (typically it appears that they are trying to wish it into existence). India's relations with Russia (and the Soviet Union before it) are rooted deeply in its post-independence history and how India conceives of itself as a post-colonial nation. The ties are most apparent at the highest levels where the honeyed words of diplomacy typically evaporate into nothing, such as Russia's assistance to India with its nuclear submarine programs. Yet one cannot deny that India's engagement with Russia is also quite narrow in scope, with a limited trade base, few people-to-people ties or cultural cross-pollination. The Tolstoy-Tagore-Gandhi-Nehru axis can only bear so much weight.
In concrete terms, we have seen a clear diminution in Indian appetites for Russian military hardware, alongside a growing appetite for American military hardware. Much of this can accounted for in terms of redressing the balance between Russian and non-Russian equipment. See the dominance of Su-30MKI in the contemporary IAF hierarchy, and the corresponding strong presumption against the selection of a Russian aircraft for MMRCA. Beyond any real or feigned questions of balance, India has also been clearly dissatisfied both with its earlier MiG-29s and the
Vikramaditya/MiG-29K saga, and in recent years has cancelled major joint programs such as FGFA and MTA.
The same period of time has seen unprecedented outreach from the Americans towards India, bearing many and varied fruits (C-17, P-8, AH-64E, F414, LM2500, etc.) Washington clearly both desired and indeed seemed to expect that India would simply fall into its lap out of sheer gratitude for Washington negotiating India's Nuclear Supplier Group waiver, that the marriage would be sealed by India "bending the knee" by signing CISMOA as the first step in becoming akin to a NATO satrapy, and that the selection of an American aircraft for MMRCA would announce this new relationship to the world. Needless to say, this has not happened, and Washington was most displeased, and it is to India's credit that she has resisted the ever-questing tendrils of the American empire to date. Yet even with all due recalibration of expectations, we are left to observe that the relationship between India and the United States is probably stronger today than at any point in history, while the relationship between India and Russia is slowly weakening.
The great forces at work in the geopolitical dynamic are (1) America's desire to make India "the new China", by which I mean (a) leveraging a vast developing market to enhance the profits of American corporations and (b) using India as a bulwark against China, much as Washington's opening to China in the 1970s was driven by its desire to use the PRC as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. This force is opposed by (2) India's own desire to avoid the
that the US seeks to impose upon the world and (3) India's desire to maintain good relations with Russia to avoid the "nightmare" scenario of facing a hostile China-Russia-Pakistan axis.
TL;DR: I don't dismiss India's own desire for autonomy and balance in its external relations. I don't think that India is about to leap into Washington's arms. Nor do I think that India is about to turn its back on Russia. Yet the trend lines in recent decades are clearly in the direction of increasing ties with the United States, and diminishing ties with Russia. In respect of all of the above, and the gradually diminishing "special additional value" of the "F-35 token" that I noted previously, I don't think it inconceivable that Washington may one day put that token on the table in pursuit of its geopolitical objectives, nor do I think it inconceivable that India would be willing to pick it up.
