Meshing our laws

Strategic dialogues,such as the one that just concluded between India and the United States,are supposed to go beyond mundane diplomatic visits. Rather than negotiation,the idea is that they are supposed to allow two countries that recognise the need for long-term cooperation to,quite literally,get their act together. Across a broad set of issues,timeframes should be worked out for joint action,legislation and regulation should be made to mesh,and priorities on coordination should be agreed upon. And that is what the two-day strategic dialogue in Washington DC managed to achieve,in spite of expectations that it would be all talk and no action.

As this newspaper has reported,one of the more immediate results of the strategic dialogue is likely to be the liberalising of export control restrictions that apply to India. There are specific orders of high technology developed in the US to which Indian companies do not have access; yet India has a history of safeguarding such technology. Comprehensive dialogues such as this help both countries in working out which outdated statutes hold back closer relations; as a contributor to these pages points out today,on high-tech issues this would require the US to rationalise some of its export-control lists and for India to implement some already passed legislation.

It is important to remember,therefore,that dialogues such as this one are not traditional diplomatic events,stages for bargaining between nations. These,if they are to work,are half bilateral explanation and half joint brainstorm,identifying domestic roadblocks to greater international cooperation. We have two that must be removed before Barack Obama visits India in November. Both are pieces of legislation that are pending in Parliament. The first: the nuclear liability bill. After it was introduced,several objections were raised to its provisions,some of which deserve scrutiny. But a bill that restricts liability is essential for both diplomatic and economic reasons,and is standard across the world. The UPA needs to ensure that this is passed in the monsoon session. The same is true of the foreign universities bill. It may not be perfect,but the lakhs of students who go without college education of sufficient quality every year cannot wait on perfection. But it is also the case that strategic partnership depends on even greater exchanges of ideas,of technology and of people. That requires our research and education sectors to draw closer together. This strategic dialogue has helped isolate the easily knocked-down hurdles in the path of greater closeness. Lets act on them now.