SHARED INTERESTS:

India digests Bush's second coming (Sultan Shahin, 11/06/04, Asia Times)

Most commentaries in the Indian media had created an atmosphere in which people thought that John Kerry and a Democratic administration would be damaging for India. Just a few days before the elections, rather inexplicably, India's former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh, who is considered the architect of the present improvement in India-US relations, rubbished the present Indian leadership for going ahead with the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP), a sort of roadmap for the improvement of bilateral ties set up by the previous government. Singh's grouse was that the US still maintains about 100 nuclear-related sanctions against India and regularly threatens to impose new ones, as in the case of Indian scientists it accuses of supplying nuclear technology and expertise to Iran.

Bush's victory has eased fears over outsourcing. The outsourcing market for IT in India is expected to grow from US$1.3 billion in 2003 to over $8 billion by 2010. There is a legitimate expectation that outsourcing in manufacturing and research and development for the vast range of military equipment and parts may provide the impetus needed in other areas of bilateral relations with the US.

And Bush is the first US president to have used the word "strategic" to describe relations with India. Many Indians admire him for that. He has also promised the transfer of high technology to India, though so far this has essentially remained no more than an empty promise. [...]

Overall, it is a measure of India's satisfaction with the elections that Delhi lost no time in not only congratulating Bush, but also inviting him promptly to visit India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday invited Bush to visit, saying it would be a "milestone" in bilateral ties. "A visit by you, Mr President, to India would be a milestone in our relations. I hope that we will have the opportunity to welcome you in India very soon," he said in a letter to Bush.

Former president Bill Clinton visited India in the last year of his second term; New Delhi expects that Bush will visit in the very first year of his second term.

Manmohan took the opportunity to reiterate India's continued support for the US agenda. India and the US must deny any encouragement to religious extremism and terrorism and resolve to eliminate them as an acceptable instrument of state policy, he said in his congratulatory letter to Bush. He also pledged India's full support to combat terrorism and proliferation of WMD to strengthen international peace and security. He also underlined the need for charting an economic roadmap that will be an integral element of the broader relationship between the two countries.

India is the power that Franco-Germany thinks it is.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 7, 2004 8:26 AM