How Obama should view India

Mr Obama has to decide whether he wants to push India into a corner or whether he will see that America has India where it wants, says T. C. A. SRINIVASA-RAGHAVAN.

This can happen only once in the life of the universe. An African-American has become the President of the US, and it is my turn to write on this page.
So, much as I would like to berate the Finance Minister for what he is doing to the economy, the markets, banks, institutions and regulators, I am afraid that will have to wait. After all, he is not going to stop, is he?
This US election is historic. Don’t forget: The last lynching of a black man took place a mere 73 years ago in 1935, within the lifetime of at least 40 per cent of Americans. Until the 1960s, inter-racial marriages were not allowed in many parts of the US. Why, blacks and whites could not even eat together. So without doubt, this change is as monumental as the one I expect in India next year — Ms Mayawati as prime minister.History was made
Still, one has to ask the question: Have the Americans voted for the Democrats or for Obama? Would Mrs Clinton have won, too, had she been nominated, or any other candidate from the Democratic Party? Definitely, because after the economic crisis, it has been curtains for the Republicans. Even if, in the unlikely event, they had fielded a black candidate, they were goners.
In that sense, history was really made when the Democrats chose a black man — but over a woman. They had the courage and the political sagacity to pose a choice between two hitherto forbidden categories. That was the real act of daring. It has paid off.
Hundreds of thousands of words will be written over the next few weeks in India on Barack Obama. Even worse, millions of words will be spoken on TV. However, when the dust settles, it will all boil down to just one thing —what’s in store for India over the next four years. The answer will depend on how well the new President balances his domestic political constituencies and personal beliefs — and hobby horses — with the imperatives of foreign policy.
As long as India didn’t figure in the US foreign policy calculus, it wasn’t hard to achieve the balance. But since the collapse of the USSR, and the emergence of China as a possible long-term threat to American security and, more recently, the terrorism thing, India has gradually begun to matter more.
That is why in his first term, Bill Clinton adopted a much tougher approach towards India than in his second term, when India began to appear as a possible ally against China. In fact, the great, unanswered question is if it had not been required by law, would Clinton have imposed sanctions on India after Pokhran-II? Any number of studies had shown that sanctions don’t work. Few people give Clinton the credit, but it was he who turned things around.
George W. Bush only took that soft approach forward, until he bought off India with the nuclear deal. Now — if I may borrow a phrase from James Hadley Chase — when the US says jump, India says how high, that too on the way up. On that at least, Prakash Karat and Co. are right.
But then, until 1985, India used to ask the same question of the USSR. Remember Indira Gandhi, despite being furious with the USSR, did not condemn its occupation of Afghanistan?
Indeed, if you ask the pros, they will tell you that India’s foreign policy independence has always been something of a myth, especially after 1971. In South Block, at least, it signifies that a joint secretary has been over-ruled and is leaking stories to the press.Indo-US relations
There is also a belief in India that the Democrats treat India worse than the Republicans do. I examined this notion recently while collaborating on a monograph on Indo-US relations for the Institute of South Asian Studies of Singapore (ISAS).
I found that on the economic side, at least, this is as much of a myth as India following an independent foreign policy is.
I also discovered something else: American advice, when taken, has never harmed India and has, in fact, always benefited it. Even more strikingly, the opposite is also true: whenever India has ignored American advice, it has paid a price, sometimes a rather heavy one.
India ignored American advice in the 1950s to build steel plants in the private sector, and paid for it.
It took American advice in 1966, under duress though, to build fertiliser plants and go for high-yielding varieties, and benefited from the resulting Green Revolution.
Then, in 1971, India went into the Soviet camp and dropped off the world economic map. But don’t forget: It was American help in the nuclear field that helped in Pokhran-I in 1974.
It was not until 1991 that India, once again on its knees, just as it was in 1966, became ‘receptive’ to US advice on reforms, delivered via the IMF. It has paid off, in more ways than one. If India is something on the world economic stage today, America has been a major factor in our getting there.
This has not come without a price. India has had to accede to US demands on the two things that matter most to America: Market access, especially in the financial sector; and non-proliferation.Why push too hard?
Not surprisingly, India has not only opened up its financial markets, when it has dragged its feet — for good reason — the Finance Ministry has turned against the Reserve Bank of India which is the supervisory authority for the financial sector. And, of course, there is the nuclear deal, which basically tells India that it will get the goodies till it doesn’t carry out any more nuclear tests.
The real issue, therefore, that Mr Obama has to decide is whether he wants to push India into corners over things like Kashmir, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and outsourcing, or whether he will have the good sense to see that America has India where it wants, and that the rest is a matter of detail. Unlike in the past, India is not only co-operating, it has nowhere else to go. So why push too hard?
But it is not as if only India has nowhere to go. Even the US needs India for its markets and its (so far supposed) ability to be able to resist China’s advance into the Indian Ocean and to counter China’s influence in East Asia. This ought to give India some room for manoeuvre if Mr Obama trots off on a tangent.
Net-net: We can expect some turbulence that comes in the wake of a big change, but really nothing much more than that.
Illustration by Rajesh
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