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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Perspectives |
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Politics |
India: More than a Market
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| World leaders who have recently visited India may have been here on behalf of contract-driven diplomacy, but only India can truly determine
how its message is heard on the world stage |
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Published : 1 January 2011 |
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LIONEL BONAVENTURE / REUTERS |
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| President Sarkozy with PM Singh on his recent visit to India.
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VER THE LAST SIX MONTHS, some of the most
powerful leaders in the world have paid official
visits to India. Most of them came primarily to
sign contracts, especially those from Western
countries facing economic crises. Barack Obama and Nicolas
Sarkozy claimed that they sold respectively 15 billion
dollars and 15 billion euros worth of civil and military |
equipment to India. The former immediately converted his figure into jobs, declaring that these contracts represented 50,000 American jobs.
India, with an annual seven percent growth rate over
the past ten years, has become one of the world’s most dynamic
economies, second only to China among emerging
countries. It needs to build infrastructure in transportation,
communication and energy—and the West is more
than happy to not only sell the needed equipment, but also
to transfer the technology when India asks for it.
This contract-driven diplomacy results in new attitudes
among Western visitors. First, it exacerbates competition
between them. This is especially problematic for the Europeans
who are supposed to be part of a ‘Union.’ The Indians
will find it more and more difficult to look at the EU as
a political entity if member leaders continue to come, one
after another, to sell their industrial products—something they can use to bring prices down. Second, this competition
for markets leads many Western visitors to indulge in a
new form of Pakistan-bashing. David Cameron and Nicolas
Sarkozy described India’s neighbour as a crucible of terrorism
while on Indian soil, something unimaginable before.
Second, those who did not go that far—like Obama, who,
instead, invited New Delhi to engage Islamabad—at least abstained
from visiting Pakistan before or after India, a practice
even former US President Bill Clinton observed in 2000
when he spent only five hours in Pakistan. In that sense, the
de-hyphenation India was longing for is taking shape.
Third, contracts-driven diplomacy gives a very important
role to business communities on both the Indian side as well
as on that of visitors. US-India relations are a case in point.
Not only the CEO forum—where heads of multinationals
from both countries meet every six months—has become a
vital link, but when Obama visited India he flew over a huge
delegation of businessmen. Ron Somers, the President of the
US-India Business Council even said, “Business is driving
this whole thing with India now. We just need governments
to bring people along.” Certainly, this link gives US-India
relations some continuity in spite of the ups and downs due
to alternations in power (remember Delhi’s disappointment
with Obama’s election), but it also tends to overshadow political
issues at a time when India does not want to be seen
as just a market and is keen, therefore, to decouple economic
relations from the political ones. Interestingly, during
Sarkozy’s visit, no commercial contract was signed—which
showed that trade negotiations had their own pace, one that
the Indian government was not prepared to interfere with.
This year’s diplomatic dance-card—Obama in November;
Sarkozy, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Russian President
Medvedev in December—suggests that India, at last,
has gained the recognition of the other great powers and,
even better, is one of them. While it is certainly an indication
of a changing international status, this assessment
needs to be qualified with a note of caution.
First, India will have to check that it is taken seriously
by these visitors when the issues at stake are not only related
to contracts. None of the visiting leaders—except the
Chinese Premier—could help from reasserting the fact that
India should become a member of the UN Security Council.
Will they do all they can to make it happen? The joint statement by President Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh mentioned the fact that Washington looked
at India as a key partner in Asia. Until recently, to use the
title of a book, the US were arming India ‘without aiming’—
which meant that Washington saw no concrete role for Delhi
in its global or even regional strategy. Now, in this final
communiqué, one can read that:
“The two leaders have a shared vision for peace, stability
and prosperity in Asia, the Indian Ocean region and the Pacific
region and are committed to work together, and with
others in the region, for the evolution of an open, balanced
and inclusive architecture in the region. […] The two leaders
agreed to deepen existing regular strategic consultations
on developments in east Asia and decided to expand
and intensify their strategic consultations to cover regional
and global issues of mutual interests, including Central and
West Asia. The two sides committed to intensify consultation,
cooperation and coordination to promote a stable,
democratic, prosperous, and independent Afghanistan.”
If we read between the lines it means not only that India
may be part of US Afghan policy, but may also be part of
Washington’s attempts at containing China, along with the
countries Obama visited in November (South Korea, Japan,
Indonesia) and others (like Australia and Singapore). Both
perspectives are problematic. First, one may wonder whether
the Americans can really risk alienating the Pakistanis
vis-à-vis Afghanistan, while they are about to subcontract
them the war there. Second, one may wonder whether India
is prepared to help the US to balance China in Asia.
The second problem posed by the international recognition
India seems to be getting today pertains to the obvious
discrepancy between this new, prestigious position and
the realities of the country. While India is shining for and
through its brilliant elite groups, it is not in the same league
as the other BRIC countries in terms of development. Its
infrastructure does not compare to those of China, a country
whose per capita income is more than twice that of India.
The risk is that the country is under the illusion that it
has arrived when it is not even half way to where it should
be. Hence, the disenchantment of the CWG—the type of
achievements for which India is not yet equipped for—and,
more importantly, the risk of social amnesia: if 10 percent
of India is doing well by international standards, mass
poverty affects millions of landless peasants who may be
wooed by naxalism in larger numbers if nothing is done to
defuse their anger and despair.
Last but not least, if India is now recognised as a global
power, what role does it want to play? As mentioned above,
it is both rich and poor and close to the US but not willing to
antagonise China. Therefore the part India can play is that
of ‘a bridge power’ as Sunil Khilnani suggested a few years ago. India can mediate between the North and the South,
between the BRIC countries and the others (those who are
more developed and those less advanced). In fact, this is
the repertoire that Jairam Ramesh successfully explored in
Cancun, where he played a much more positive role than in
Copenhagen.
There was a time—in the 1950s and 60s—when India had
a message for the world (that of Nehru, spelled out in terms
of non-alignment and disarmament), but no voice because
of its poverty. Unitl recently, India could be heard, but had
nothing to say—except standard nationalistic arguments.
Today, India may have both, the voice and a message pertaining
to a defence of multilateralism and sustainable development.
It may be too early to rejoice, but India must
realise that the world is watching her and that she may play
a role that Europe, exhausted by its crises, tried to play for
the last time in Copenhagen but may not play in the future.
Other democratic, emerging countries—including Brazil—
may join hands with her in this new scenario. Only time
will tell if these are utopian views.
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