COVER STORY
us agenda | obama visit
us agenda | obama visit
Wooing 300 m Indians, 900 m be damnedThe President furthered the agenda, started by Bush, of building ties with the Indian middle class for US gain
by MG DEVASAHAYAM
DISSECTING US President Barack Obama’s Diwali visit to India, distinguished diplomat Chinmaya R Gharekhan has this to say: “Mr Obama no doubt came to India with a definite agenda in his mind. His main target audience was youth and business circles – the middle class, in other words. It is the middle class which will increasingly determine our economic and foreign policy. This GenNext is probably no different from previous GensNext in wanting to get rich quick; only that it has more opportunities to do so now. If the middle class is brought into close embrace with America that would be the best guarantee of a pro-U.S. orientation of the country….”
This has been the US aspiration since the dawn of the liberalization-privatization-globalization era in the early 1990s. This was the agenda former President George Bush – loved by every Indian, if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is to be believed – publicly articulated when he came calling in April 2006. He did not mince words when he openly declared, not once, but twice – in Hyderabad and New Delhi – that the “USA would like to engage with 300 million Indians”. Who are these “300 million Indians” in a country of 1200 million? This was the “prosperous middle class” that UPA-I was attempting to create by mortgaging India’s human and natural resources to the rampaging MNCs, mostly American. This was sought to be done through a plethora of policy decisions: 100 per cent FDI in real estate, banking, insurance and retail trade, the nuclear deal, the knowledge initiative in agriculture, lucrative SEZs, indiscriminate privatization of higher education, welcoming foreign universities, Americanizing the civil services and so on.
WITH the “nagging” communists in UPA-I applying the brake, some of the “market-making” agenda were slowed. UPA-II, free of the communist nuisance and with ideologically bankrupt coalition partners in tow, wanted to go the full hog and complete the unfinished agenda of freeing the country from the 900 million laggards and converting it into a buzzing MNC market. Hence the encouragement of unabated inflation, high wages, luxury consumption, black money, landgrabbing, wealth accumulation, and blatant scams and scandals. The devious plan seems to be to transform India’s low-cost economy into a high-cost one to match that of the US.
Enthused by all this, President Obama seems to have honed his agenda to capture this emerging market to make up for the declining American market battered and bruised by the Chinese avalanche. He chartered his tour itinerary in India accordingly and was accompanied not by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton but by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. He flew into Mumbai to address the business class to canvass more of the same to “help create jobs in the US”.
Obama’s Delhi visit was more a formality and included some more signing of deals with the government, the details of which remain secret.
In the event, Obama’s Delhi visit was more a formality and included some more signing of deals with the government, the details of which remain secret. Though the entire visit appeared hazy, one message came out clearly. Now that the 300-million Indian market has taken off, the US does not really bother about the politicians and bureaucrats in Delhi who have served their purpose. It showed.
The urgency of Obama’s visit and the near panic he exhibited in declaring that creation of jobs in the US was the main purpose of his visit, at first appeared strange. It appeared less so after reading the following story circulating on email: Here it goes. The Emma Maersk, owned by a Danish shipping line, is displacing North Americanmade commodities with “Made in China” goods in a big way. This monster ship, which transports goods across the Pacific in just five days, has been commissioned by Wal-Mart to get all their goods from China. The ship holds an incredible 15,000 containers and has a 207-foot deck beam. Two more ships of the same size are to be built in the next couple of years. Ninety-one per cent of Wal-Mart products are made in China. A well-researched documentary says that all the containers are shipped back to China empty because the US’ high-cost economy is no match for China’s. That the US sends nothing back on these ships speaks volumes for the current financial state of the country and the cause of such high unemployment.
Now that the 300-million Indian market has taken off, the US doesn’t bother about the politicians and bureaucrats who have served their purpose.
EARLIER, the refrain in the US was “Pakistan is an ally, India is a market”. It is now changing to “China fills US markets, US fills India’s”. This is precisely why the US wants to engage with 300 million Indians.
Top among the goodies that the visiting President threw the way of the ruling class was his “looking forward” to India becoming a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council. Does it mean anything? One can look forward to anything in the years ahead, even to Indians topping the Olympic medal tally, whether it happens or not. As if to contain the contrived euphoria on this innocuous statement, US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake clarified: “The reform of the UN Security Council and India’s bid to gain a permanent seat will be a long and complicated process.” Yet the alacrity with which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh welcomed this vague and tentative utterance indicates the fawning nature of India’s ruling establishment.
Encouraged by this fawning, Locke issued a stern advisory that would consolidate the 300-million middle class market while further alienating the 900 million “laggards”: “We believe that India should be more open to foreign direct investment in a variety of sectors, because we believe that some of the impediments for FDI actually hinder India’s ability to achieve its goals of economic progress, job creation for the people and growth of the economy….” Commerce Minister Anand Sharma was all ears.
Obama honed his agenda to capture this market to make up for the American market battered and bruised by the Chinese avalanche.
Be that as it may, enamoured of the prospect of jobs and partial prosperity stemming from this target group, the US has won over a large pool of faithful foot soldiers ranging from bureaucrats, infocrats, technocrats, academics, economists, bio-technologists, nuclear scientists, political representatives, professionals and call centre employees to even NGOs and welfare organizations, who reinforce the subjugation, hegemony and greed of global capital led by the US regime. These worthies readily endorse the parasitical “development model” wherein thousands of hectares of forests are flattened and millions of tribals are banished from their land to pave the way for MNCs to establish their mining and industrial empires.
Obama has called India an “indispensable and natural ally”. Does he care to know what the indispensable priorities for the largest democracy in the world are? He should also ponder as to whether India could really be a natural US ally with 75 per cent of its people, most living on less than a dollar a day, totally removed from its radar. The President has a historic responsibility to undo historical injustices inflicted upon India’s poor and disadvantaged by the policies and practices of greedy globalization and shift towards a pro-people approach in contemporary policies. The US should deal with 1200 million Indians if it wants the country to be its “indispensable and natural ally”. For this Obama has to change the gathering perception that he is nothing more than the soft face of US corporate culture. This was not so when he got elected. “Change” and “hope” were the two words which marked his election. However, two years down the line, very little seems to have changed for American citizens and for millions across the world. What is worse, he has not been able to stand up to the ravaging of human rights in many parts of the world and pursue an inclusive growth agenda.
Change for the better, but...
by FRANK SILBEY
I confess to an increasing feeling of pleasure at what appears to be a growing rapprochement between the US and India on the one hand, and between Israel and India on the other. The Indian American community here is growing in political maturity and power as well as economic success. And Israel has become a powerful little science and technology center with worldwide implications.
I, for one, am simply appalled and hostile to America’s wrong-headed foreign policy of embracing Pakistan and its ruling clique’s corrupt and destructive policies. All our military aid is being devoted not to any effort against the Taliban, but instead to preparing for a conventional war against India. The corruption of the Pakistan regime and its aid, covert and overt, to the Taliban, is an open and disgusting secret. The war in Afghanistan will end inconclusively, at best. Karzai is corrupt to the bone and sooner or later this realization and the unwinnability of our effort will sink into the American public. We desperately need to start rebuilding our infrastructure with the money we are pissing away on this war.
The coming years will, I believe, reveal a growing series of concerns about China and its growing sphere of influence, turning the Indian Ocean into an area of contention that will create a growing area of cooperation between India and America.
(The writer is a US-based analyst and a former chief investigator for the Senate)
by FRANK SILBEY
I confess to an increasing feeling of pleasure at what appears to be a growing rapprochement between the US and India on the one hand, and between Israel and India on the other. The Indian American community here is growing in political maturity and power as well as economic success. And Israel has become a powerful little science and technology center with worldwide implications.
I, for one, am simply appalled and hostile to America’s wrong-headed foreign policy of embracing Pakistan and its ruling clique’s corrupt and destructive policies. All our military aid is being devoted not to any effort against the Taliban, but instead to preparing for a conventional war against India. The corruption of the Pakistan regime and its aid, covert and overt, to the Taliban, is an open and disgusting secret. The war in Afghanistan will end inconclusively, at best. Karzai is corrupt to the bone and sooner or later this realization and the unwinnability of our effort will sink into the American public. We desperately need to start rebuilding our infrastructure with the money we are pissing away on this war.
The coming years will, I believe, reveal a growing series of concerns about China and its growing sphere of influence, turning the Indian Ocean into an area of contention that will create a growing area of cooperation between India and America.
(The writer is a US-based analyst and a former chief investigator for the Senate)
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