Wanna join the Mars caucus?

This week's approval by the US Senate of a bill which seeks to suspend the economic sanctions leveled against India and Pakistan followin...

This week8217;s approval by the US Senate of a bill which seeks to suspend the economic sanctions leveled against India and Pakistan following last year8217;s nuclear tests, is certain to be seen as proof of the good job that India8217;s diplomats and the lobbyists they8217;ve hired on Capitol Hill are doing. One can almost envision Ambassador Naresh Chandra making a pitch for increasing budgets, touting this very success8217;: to play the Washington-game well, we need Washington-sized budgets. The fact that the US appears to be supporting India8217;s stance on the Kashmir imbroglio and actually chastising Pakistan is also certain to add to this I8217;m-doing-well belief. While not wishing to make light of the effort put in by the diplomat-lobbyist combine, especially following the near-paranoia in the US over what they continue to feel is two-religious-crazies-with-a-bomb, that appears an argument over-stated.

India8217;s success in finally piloting thr-ough an amendment bill in the Senate, I8217;d imagine, has taken place, as thedelightful saying goes, despite itself. As a visitor to Washington just a few weeks ago, I was regaled with stories, partly true and partly not as all Washington stories are, of how amateurish the Indian efforts at presenting their point of view were.

A little after the sanctions, for instance, the government signed on one of Washington8217;s best-rated lobbyist firms, Verner Liipfert Bernhard McPherson amp; Hand, to lobby for it. The idea of doing so was, apart from the firm being rated the best of the top 10 Washington lobbyists by Fortune magazine, that ex-Senator Bob Dole had recently joined its ranks. So, it was probably envisioned that Dole would go to important personages on the Hill and say, for example, Jack, you8217;ve got a problem with India and I want to tell you why you8217;re wrong8217;. But to lobby for India, Dole would have to register himself as a foreign agent8217;, and that8217;s something he doesn8217;t want to do.

So, an Indian-American, Kapil Kap Sharma, handles India8217;s lobbying at Verner Liipfert.Now, most lobbyists as well as lobby-watchers, acknowledge Kap8217;s skills as well as conta-cts with the staff of various US Congressmen 8212; he worked as a staffer himself 8212; but he isn8217;t Bob Dole, nor does he have his access. So India8217;s paying for a Bob Dole, but getting a Kap Sharma!

It gets better. The advertisement India put out in various US newspapers following the tests, trying to put its nuclear programme in perspective, was sub-titled Essentially Peaceful8217;! Needless to say, it sent jitters up the American spines. It didn8217;t help that a copy of Prime Minister Vajpayee8217;s letter to President Clinton saying that the threat of China was behind India8217;s nuclear test, was leaked to a prominent US paper around the same time.

Yeah, sure, such things do happen, our embassy in Washington will probably argue, but let8217;s not blow them out of proportion. Let8217;s not belittle the effort and the impact it has had, for example, of creating an India Caucus which has over the years got well over 100 members in the USCongress. The India Caucus, in fact, is the single-largest ethnic lobby in the Congress, and serves as a body which can provide answers to most India-queries.

True, but let8217;s also examine who the caucus really comprises of, and their commitment. While the caucus is undoubtedly important, those in the know say that only a handful of its members actually know anything more than the bare basics about India. Most members, I8217;m told, are simply there to collect the campaign donations from the rich Indian community which is asking nothing from its representatives except perhaps a picture with them, perhaps with a personalised notation on it 8212; for those unfamiliar with the US system, being part of a caucus does not imply any obligation whatsoever to vote in favour of any legislation. If a Mars caucus was set up, with similar possibilities of collecting campaign donations without any serious corresponding quid pro quo in terms of supporting pro-Mars legislation, the Washington joke goes, it8217;ll attract an equallylarge number of members.

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A good comparison, and one that invariably comes up, is that of China, and how well its diplomats and lobbyists do. A few weeks before the pro-India bill was passed, a damaging Congressional report was released in Washington. The Cox report bared details of how, for decades, the Chinese stole US nuclear secrets from its laboratories to keep ahead in the nuclear race.

Naturally, the report has created quite a stir, and the average American is feeling cheated: here8217;s a country they kept supporting, and this is what happens. It8217;s early days yet, but my sense is that little legislative action against China will emerge due to this. There8217;ll be a lot of anti-China feeling for a while, there probably won8217;t be any major pro-China legislation immediately, the administration will try and do damage control by tightening anti-spy measures in their laboratories, and so on, but that8217;s it. China8217;s most-favoured-nation status, which allows them to do business in the US without being a member ofthe WTO, will keep getting renewed. The reason is simple: the US benefits tremendously from China. It gets cheap imports which the people love, and US companies are happy to do business there.

So while it is undoubtedly true that India8217;s lobbying efforts still have a long way to go, in the case of country8217;s like China, their economic muscle also plays a big role. By contrast, India8217;s lobby is handicapped since US business and its people still don8217;t have a sufficiently large stake in India and its economy. It8217;s the economy, stupid, Ambassador Chandra may do well to say to his political bosses in New Delhi.