Columns: Kautilya

Columns

India Today, July 19, 1999
July 19, 1999

KAUTILYA
US and We

India's war cry: yankee go home. Take me with you.

By Jairam Ramesh

Whatever its short-term impact, the Washington Statement of July 4 is a significant development. We have interpreted this in our usual conspiratorial way. The Washington Statement actually reflects a changing American approach to the subcontinent and not "evenhandedness". The question is whether we will draw the right lessons and consolidate to our long-term advantage.

That we will be called upon to launch a meaningful, bilateral dialogue after the status quo has been restored in Kargil is abundantly clear. At the same time, we will be forced to fashion a new and mature approach to the United States.

Indians are working themselves into an apoplectic fit over the possibility of American mediation. Kautilya does not subscribe to the fear that an initiative on the lines of Camp David -- which brought Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat to this presidential retreat near Washington to finalise a peace agreement -- is on the cards. Even so it is useful to recall that the most enduring monument to India-Pakistan amity, the Indus Waters Treaty, would not have materialised in 1960 without international mediation.

Americans are concerned with Israel because of the Jewish factor in American life. For similar reasons they have been worried about Northern Ireland as well. Kashmir bothers the American establishment largely because it is in a nuclear cockpit. Three nuclear powers own property in Jammu and Kashmir and this ownership is disputed by all three. Two of these nuclear powers have seen it fit in their wisdom, misguided in Kautilya's view, to remain outside the mainstream of global nuclear non-proliferation regimes.

J.N. Dixit, the distinguished former foreign secretary, once told Kautilya that the problem with India's approach to the US is that it is based on panga, not pragmatism. Panga is one of those Hindi words that convey the meaning beautifully, a meaning that gets lost in its translation into the English "prickly confrontation". How very true, although parenthetically and respectfully Kautilya has to point out that the redoubtable gentleman was himself seen to be a great practitioner of this art while in service.

We certainly do not have to become lackeys but we could do without hypocrisy. Kautilya is amused whenever there is a whiff of the US imposing visa restrictions and the outcry that results in this country from people who otherwise rave and rant against American hegemony. Knee-jerk anti-Americanism and the failure to engage the Americans constructively across a wide spectrum has cost this country dearly. Kautilya will incur the wrath of his party colleagues but it has to be admitted that the eight rounds of Strobe Talbott-Jaswant Singh talks have been an exception. It is true that the US still looks at us largely through the prism of nuclear non-proliferation but there are ways of balancing that out by engaging in a wider dialogue more frequently at the highest levels. A bilateral commission of the type that the US has with Mexico is a good model for us to propose.

Since 1945, no nation has become an economic powerhouse without exploiting American markets, investments and technologies. China runs a $50 billion trade surplus with the US even while it indulges in sharply critical rhetoric on the political level. Its volume of trade with the US is over seven times that of India's and it draws almost 10 times the investment we attract from the US.

Even though our economic ties with the US have expanded significantly since 1991, old mindsets linger. Today India and Pakistan are the only two countries opposing a new Millennium Round of trade negotiations under the WTO. It is a sign of how immature our reactions are that in 1998 we berated the Americans for attacking Osama Bin Laden's sites in Afghanistan but now we are seeing convergence between our own and US interests to rein in the Saudi millionaire's terrorists.

A recent study by Anne Lee Saxenian shows that 7 per cent of Silicon Valley's 11,443 high-technology firms started since 1980 are run by Indians. This understates Indian influence since it does not include those firms started by Indians that have non-Indian CEOs. Many top US companies like United Airlines, US Air, Arthur Andersen and McKinsey have India-born CEOs. Interestingly, Worth magazine has just put out a list of 50 top American CEOs in which Kashmir-born M. Farooq, the CEO of Ethan Allan, is the only Indian to figure. Top academics and Wall Street figures are ethnic Indians. Indians are gradually becoming active in American politics as well. How we leverage this diaspora and sustain the networks will be critical. But this has to be accompanied by a second, big-bang liberalisation wave at home.

India's record in narcotics control has been exemplary and we must cash in on this. Cooperation in science and technology, especially in agriculture and health, is another promising area for mutual benefit. PL-480 funds have sustained such cooperation. But these funds are drying up and have to be replenished. Interest in India on American campuses has to be revived. This will require a new mindset on visas and research project clearances. A most promising MIT India programme has just been launched but it is running on individual initiative. Long-term sources of funding from industry and government have to be found.

The author is secretary of the AICC's Economic Affairs Department.
The views expressed here are his own.

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