Directions: In the following passage, some of the words have been...

This year, the world’s largest democracy, India, and the biggest country by ___ A ___, Russia, are celebrating the 70th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between them. Russia continues to be among India’s major politico-diplomatic and defence partner nations. While India has ___ B ___& separate strategic partnership pacts with more than two dozen countries, the Indian and Russian governments in December 2010 ___ C ___& their bilateral ‘Strategic Partnership’ to what they termed a “Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.”

The New Delhi-based ___ D ___& ‘Foundation for National Security Research’, which did a comparative assessment of India’s strategic partnerships — meaning, ‘political-diplomatic, defence and economic cooperation’ (during the 10-year period prior to November 2011), had said, “Russia emerges as the most important strategic partner of India (followed by the U.S., France, the U.K., Germany and Japan in that order).” The November 2011 report had found that Russia had provided strong political and diplomatic support to India and helped enormously in building India’s defence capability. However, it warned that the “economic content of the (India-Russia) partnership is extremely weak,” and recommended that “urgent and ___ E ___& steps need to be taken to improve economic relations if this (India-Russia) partnership is to be sustained and made durable.”