India's planned manoeuvre of influence and the departure of Abe and Howard
INDIA, despite its demographic burden, is the fifth largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power parity and it has the third largest investor base in the world. India has proved itself to be one of the most vibrant democracies in the world. The US, on the other hand, emerged from the Cold War not as a country with unchallenged economic power and political influence, but as a superpower with unmatched military firepower. Many in the US felt that the country had overextended itself in international affairs at the cost of domestic issues and argued in favour of reviving the country's economic competitiveness, educational excellence and law and order situation.
While the end of the Cold War led to a gradual improvement in India-US relations, these shifts came to a halt in May 1998 when India conducted nuclear tests and the US imposed wide ranging sanctions. In March 2000 President Clinton visited India, the first visit by a US president in 22 years and since then India-US relations have developed at an unprecedented pace. The terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001 and subsequent support by India further galvanized the growing closeness. The 1.7 million-strong Indian-American community also acted as a liaison between India and the US. While the first wave of Indian immigrants to the US in the 1960s and 1970s were professionals like doctors, scientists and engineers, recent trends show substantial diversification of skills with consequential percentage of new ventures in Silicon Valley have been started by Indian Americans.
During the past few years, India was elevated as the strategic partner by the US to meet the global challenges of the 21st century in cooperation with Prime Minister of Shinzo Abe of Japan and John Howard of Australia. US had the strong desire to increase mutual security against the common threats posed by so called terrorism. India is also very much hopeful about the successful transformation of the US-India relationship which will allow her to have a positive influence on the future international system. The partnership was not limited to security threats only but they were also making progress in the areas of developing bilateral business climate supportive of trade and investment and expanding cooperation in agriculture. Both the countries have launched the knowledge initiative on agriculture to link universities, technical institutions, and businesses to support high-priority joint agriculture education, research, and capacity-building projects. The creation of the Asia Pacific Partnership on 'Clean Development and Climate', which is supposed to increase collaboration to promote the development, diffusion, deployment and transfer of cleaner, cost-effective and more efficient technologies and practices.
The knowledge partnership is to generate cooperation in science and technology and promote industrial research and development and they also agreed to work together to promote innovation, creativity and technological advancement in the field of intellectual property rights to include capacity building activities and to continue exploring further cooperation in space, space exploration, satellite navigation, and earth science. The decision of India and the United States to designate a representative to the Government Advisory Board of the International Centre for Democratic Transition located in Budapest to facilitate cooperative activities was another step towards more worldwide acceptability. The United States and India are also expanding cooperation to enhance job creation and economic growth, support economic reform and liberalization. Over the last few years, US exports to India have more than doubled and to an extent helping to create better-paying jobs in the United States. The United States feel that trade is essential to promoting global economic growth, development, and freedom. The US also believes that effective democracies with governments accountable to the people are the best means of ensuring long-term stability and prosperity. And hence they decided to work together to support the growth and development of civil societies, including independent media and non-governmental organizations, in countries that seek such assistance. The United States and India have also reached a historic agreement on civil nuclear cooperation. The agreement addresses India's surging energy needs for its growing economy. India in return has agreed to take steps that will bring it into the international non-proliferation mainstream, including placing its civilian nuclear facilities and programs under IAEA safeguards and adhering to the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime.
The United States also agreed to help meet India's rising demand for energy by looking at new technologies to produce clean, safe, and reliable energy. They have also decided to create zero-emissions coal-fired power plant, enabling greater use of coal in an environmentally sustainable way. The United States and India, together with Australia, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, are working on practical ways to improve energy security, improve air quality, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. India finally has given in to the pressure of the United States to facilitate mutual logistic support during combined training, exercises, and disaster relief operations. The United States reaffirmed its desire to help meet India's defence needs and to provide the important technologies and capabilities that India seeks starting a new era after about 50 years of suspicion on each other. Agreements are being completed that will allow for the launch of US satellites and satellites containing US components by Indian launch vehicles. Both the countries agreed to expand bilateral efforts on avian influenza by reaching out to the private sector, developing regional communications strategies, and planning an in-region containment and response exercise and to further strengthen cooperation on HIV/AIDS by leveraging resources, knowledge, and expertise. Since then the US Food and Drug Administration have given approval to thirteen generic antiretroviral drugs produced by Indian pharmaceutical companies. These drugs can now be purchased as part of the President's Emergency Plan for HIV/AIDS for use around the world.
US initiated the Container Security Initiative (CSI), the Customs-Trade Partnership Agreement (C-TPAT) and the Megaports Initiative, which are intended to screen suspicious shipments before they reach the US shores. Herein also it is learnt that the Jawaharlal Nehru Port is to be the first in the sub-continent to join the US Customs' CSI. Although the Indian Customs and other authorities had strong reservations that CSI, under which US officials are posted in foreign ports, would affect the country's sovereignty. The US is understood to have assured New Delhi that this would not happen and the US is also believed to have agreed to consider favourably India's request for allowing posting of its own Customs officials in American ports. Many in India, of course criticise the US Government's excessive reliance on technology and equipment in preference to human resource as the answer to port security and not all Americans are also convinced that the US has not overstepped its limits in the name of maritime security. After all, the security measures being prescribed by the US agencies for the host countries are costly to implement as these involve not only installation of expensive equipment but also compliance with various procedures and systems involving extensive training and therefore investments.
Looking back, it can be seen that Indian political elites, spread across various parties, managed to devise ways of warding off the overbearing Americans and learnt how to cope with a cultivated animosity in Washington towards New Delhi. After initial apprehensions about globalisation, the Indian elites - political, economic, and bureaucratic have failed to understand the depth of suspicion the average Indian has traditionally entertained about the US which have taken an intense discomfort over what US has been doing in Iraq and over what he is threatening to do in Iran. Since 1990s, Indian nationalism has taken different routes- the metropolitan nationalism, practiced by the new 300-million Indian middle class, are mostly interested in economic terms. These Indians have aspirations to improve their lifestyle many times over in their lifetime, and they believe that a serious and sustained economic engagement with the US is the key to those aspirations. These metropolitan nationalists have bought into the American dream and are willing to give the US the benefit of the doubt when Washington professes a democratic kinship. The metropolitan nationalist is morally at ease in his admiration for the US, partly because there is no Soviet Union to make a countervailing claim and China remains too distant.
The second stream of Indian nationalism is to be located in the vast rural India encompassing about 700 million Indians who struggle everyday with deprivations and discomforts and remain unimpressed and uninterested in the US policies in India. To most of them, the US remains a distant country and suspects Washington of resenting India's rise as a great power. Many of them even questioned the government's ability to protect national interests in the on-going nuclear deal negotiations. This suspicion has given further twist and turns over what the US has shown it is capable of doing to a country - Afghanistan, Iraq, in the name of "a regime change". In particular, the minorities in India, as elsewhere, have come to question the anti-Islam bias in the American formulations and policies. Most people may be living anywhere does not like the idea of any nation, however powerful, beating up another country. India-US relationship cannot easily graduate into a strategic partnership without all shades of Indian nationalism feeling comfortable with Washington's global agenda. This is as much to do with the churning in a changing India as with the contentions within the minuscule strategic community.
With the departure of Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe from the political stage of Asia- pacific region, George Bush might be gazing wistfully at their catalogue of unfinished tasks in this area. Somewhere high on the list is bound to be their ambition of seeing India taking over as a strategic partner in South Asia with the definite aims of acting as an anchor of stability in the troubled region and as a democratic counterweight to authoritarian China. With that end in view, warships from the US, Australia, Japan, India and Singapore participated in a joint exercise in the Bay of Bengal last year, demonstrating a major expansion in the previously held bilateral exercise. India with its stable democracy, billion strong population, sound economy and powerful military could be right fit
in the four way partnership envisaged by Bush, Howard and Abe. But protests in India against both the naval exercise and a separate Indo-US civil nuclear deal indicate that such a tie at least for the time being appears to be suicidal for the Government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It is to be remembered that another federal government of India was almost toppled when India allowed refuelling facility to US military Transport aircraft at Mumbai airport during the Gulf war. We have heard Abe speaking about creating an "arc of freedom and prosperity" and a "broader Asia partnership" incorporating Japan, India, Australia and US but for now it appears that such partnership with India as a pillar is doomed at best to uncertainty and failure.
The author is a freelancer.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments