Thank You India

So, I've noticed that countries get varying amounts of respect for fairly stupid reasons. There was the weird France-hatred a few years ago (not to be confused with everyday, perfectly rational France-hatred), an anti-Canadian thing a bit before that, and of course in the late 80s the anti-Japan thing. Leaving aside that kind of group-think, individuals have very idiosyncratic ways of judging countries. I told a foreign economist that Japan gets a lot of respect in the US, particularly among young people, and he was astounded: "Their GDP has barely grown in 10 years!"

More interesting, from my perspective, is why India is newly respectable. I'll make a few guesses, but feel free to comment if you have any other suggestions. My ideas are:
1) India has a large and thriving high-tech sector, which Americans automatically respect.
2) India is very different, but in largely comfortable ways. They speak English, they like Western culture, they don't seem to have ambitions of killing us. This doesn't explain why they didn't get respect, say, 10 years ago, though.
3) Nuclear weapons. India has "joined the club" and proven its abilities in the one area that counts diplomatically: the ability to vaporize large numbers of people in a very short amount of time.
4) India is a country with a nice set of Tata's.

Sorry for that last one. Please comment if you have any ideas.