Too many fanciful notion of friends there and friends here. Useless chatter unless India is in an actual position to offer these countries something.
Tech? no
Infrastructure? no
Weapons? no
Reciprocal interest in India's sphere of influence? no
Security guarantee? no
Leverage against China for the Philippines? no
The Philippines would be better off, doing the balancing act between China and the US that it is doing now.
Agreed. However, I do have a different question for you. It entirety depends if you want to answer it.
How does it feel if some one helping your enemy in front of your eyes?
I ask above question is because as soon as we started talking about a nation next to China you jumped in here with expert opinion.
On topic, to answer you question
Tech? no -> I agree that we are not at par with your country. However, we are making a good progress in this area. We are try to develop or we already have prototype of defense equipment. To name few which are recently inducted into our armed forces are 1. Akash Missiles 2. Nag (ATGM) 3. UAV's like Lakshya, Nishant and we had flown our own Rustom 1.
Here you will ask that you people take lot of time, I will answer you question in advance. We are not copying anybody's technology and calling it ours or making a duplicate copy with a different name(I don't mean to show you or your mother land down). However, that is the fact now Russian's are not giving you anything. We are failing and taking time because we are doing everything from scratch something we can call it our own.
Infrastructure? no -> I seriously think you should come and visit India some time. Your country men want to create a city like Bangalore in China and I am sorry to inform you that Bangalore is not in China, its in India.
Weapons? no -> Yes, we can. I think I have answered it in your first question.
Reciprocal interest in India's sphere of influence? no -> I am not sure why will you say that. We are not try to influence Philippines against you(as you are doing with us, I bet you know whom I am pointing). We just want a strong military nation in that region who can stand Chinese aggression in sea.
Security guarantee? no -> No body can give any one any security guarantee. Can you give a security guarantee to Pakistan, where US is bombing everyday?
Leverage against China for the Philippines? no -> I would agree with you on this point. There is a better nation who can do that, you know that country too and you call it THE USA.
Incredible India could give its Mig 21's. It would kill 2 birds with one stone. help phiils and save Indian pilots lives
Why just stop there, give them some more. I would say just gift it. We have discussed enough what all we can provide to Philippines.
I keep hearing this. "We could sell them the Brahmos!" Why would anyone go through the trouble of buying an Indian P-800 variant when the Russians are marketing the same product. I have yet to figure out why the Bramhos would be better per unit-cost than the P-800 and has the Russians allowed export given their input in the Brahmos.
We heard Indians say the samething about selling the Brahmos to the Vietnamese, then the Vietnamese just went ahead and bought the P-800 from Russia.
Do you have any proof before running your mouth. If any why don't you give us comparative study that you have done. Brahmos, was not exported to any nation just because we want to fulfill our armed force's demand first and then think about export.