This study has examined the nature of trust and social capital in the India-China dyad and argued that trust in the relationship is both epiphenomenal and transitory. Trust is epiphenomenal in that it is basically a function of favourable strategic circumstances, not a separate variable that steers action. But its ability to affect decisions or stop escalation in a situation of growing security awareness is limited. Trust is a fragile commodity as repeated interactions, trust building processes and institutional structures have not been able to create lasting social capital. Trust is precariously rooted in conventions, rituals and institutional memory and is prone to catastrophe. Hence, India-China relations are a partnership of managed co-existence, not of genuine reconciliation. There is co-operation, there is competition. But neither has built enough social capital to turn strategic rivalry into stable cooperation. More broadly, this study contributes to ongoing debates by showing that trust is a fragile and contingent resource in world politics. Trust can tolerate temporary arrangements and procedural cooperation in unequal and strategically competitive relationships, but rarely goes beyond the seriousness of power politics and strategic uncertainty. The primary task of the international order, then, is not simply to generate opportunities for connection but to create institutions, norms and shared expectations that can translate episodic confidence into long-term social capital. Trust in relationships such as the India-China dyad will likely remain institutionally fragile in practice, a transient mediator within deeper mechanisms of rivalry and insecurity, while counting politically in rhetoric until such conditions are met.