American idol

Nevertheless, being more or less recognised as a nuclear power notwithstanding, there are cautionary tales for New Delhi. The battle has not ended, in many ways it has just begun.

In the coming months, as the Houses of Congress debate the concessions to India, New Delhi8217;s lobbyists have to work at breakneck speed. It can8217;t all be left to the White House, and to complacency: 8216;8216;Haan, haan 8230; Bush kar dega. Yes, yes 8230; Bush will do it.8217;8217;

From NRI doctors to IT barons, from tapping old India hands to persuading individual Congressmen, it will be a diplomatic whirlwind. Proposals and proper nouns that may sound alarm bells on Capitol Hill will have to be quietly dropped. Mani Shankar Aiyar8217;s pipeline from Iran must surely now remain a pipedream. India will have to make some choices, small ones perhaps, but choices all the same.

New Delhi has to get its priorities right. Rather than expend energies and resources chasing a G-4 lost cause 8212; a pointless, dead-on-arrival attempt to gatecrash the Security Council 8212; it needs to sell its case for acceptance as a full nuclear power: to American politicians, to potential spoiler countries. This is the real prize. A seat at the high table 8212; at the United Nations, League of Nations 2.0 or wherever 8212; is only a corollary.

Aside from a tight timetable for the foreign ministry, there are broader questions to contemplate. America is not in this for charity. To quote Dan Quayle 8212; taking a dig at the rump Soviet Union 8212; Uncle Sam doesn8217;t do deals with a 8216;8216;Burkina Faso with nuclear weapons8217;8217;.

So why is an 8216;8216;India with nuclear weapons8217;8217; different? Why is it deemed acceptable and legitimate? What does America want of India in return for nuclear fuel, and the slew of agreements from space to agriculture to defence?

The answer is simple enough: India has to keep its reforms going and its economy growing. Everything else is secondary. Nothing 8212; not weapons systems, not nuclear plants 8212; can make India a global power and an alternative role model to China if it reverts to being a slowcoach economy, if liberalisation doesn8217;t continue, if retail and banking don8217;t open up, if infrastructure is not seriously upgraded, if leading cities are allowed to waste away and die.

These are the nuts and bolts of great power status; the nuclear-tipped missiles are only the gleaming showpieces.

A bit of context would be important here. Bush and Singh went to their summit seemingly hamstrung by respective hardliners. Segments of the State Department bureaucracy 8212; 8216;8216;non-proliferation jihadis8217;8217;, as they have been called 8212; were sceptical of a nuclear relationship with India. In Lutyens8217; Delhi, the Communist parties were sceptical of 8212; even hostile to 8212; any sort of relationship with America.

Between them, these two groups represented among the last of the Cold War warriors. As it happened, Bush overrode his lot and took a political call on the nuclear energy issue that the bureaucracy bowed down to. Now it8217;s up to the Indian prime minister. He needs to deliver on his economy, and save it from his socialist jihadis.

On his return, Singh can expect some angry faces among the Left. The general secretaries of both the CPI and CPIM have visited China in recent weeks, an unusual occurrence even for fraternal parties. Going by the charitable perception that Indian politicians make impressionable guests, the two Communist parties can be expected to growl at India8217;s proximity to America.

To be fair, such scepticism is not limited to the Left. There is an intellectual argument that runs broadly on these lines: if the US sees China as a longterm rival, why should India bother? Let us sit it out.

On the face of it, this seems reasonable, but it masks hard realities. Nobody is suggesting India and China will go to war or need to go to war. Even so, to see China as a benign neighbour and not for what it is, obvious competition, is strange logic. As India8217;s economy expands, it will rival China 8212; in the race for energy sources in Central Asia, in the quest for consumer goods markets in Africa.

Further, if India is to become a genuine leader nation, it cannot pursue economic reforms without mass employment. A 8216;8216;knowledge-based economy8217;8217; and a services boom is very well, but a genuine thrust towards making India a meaningful manufacturing base cannot be forgotten forever.

When this happens 8212; and perhaps the idea of a defence industrial complex is only one of many starts 8212; India will begin to encroach upon China8217;s turf. It will become China8217;s competitor, even if it doesn8217;t want to. Nations don8217;t become powers by investing in risk-free bonds; they need to place bets on destiny8217;s stock market.

For decades, Indian foreign policy was a tearjerker starring institutionalised victimhood. After Singh8217;s visit, America has left India with very few excuses to hang on to. Depending on how one sees it, this could be either an opportunity or a problem. The option is India8217;s.