Thread: America's growing coziness with India

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercuryn ... 156350.htm

Posted on Sun, Jul. 17, 2005

America's growing coziness with India
VISIT BY PRIME MINISTER MARKS CLOSER TIES DRIVEN LARGELY BE ECONOMICS



On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Washington, where he will address a joint session of Congress and meet with President Bush at the White House. Following closely the visit of India's defense minister, this is a significant sign of the growing closeness between the world's two largest democracies.

The dramatic change in U.S.-Indian relations and the prospects for future partnership were explored in a just-published joint study carried out by the Pacific Council on International Policy, the West Coast partner of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Observer Research Foundation, a leading Indian think tank. The study, which I participated in as a key member of the joint task force, is the first bilateral effort to examine what is rapidly becoming one of the most important relationships in the world.

An excerpt of the executive summary of the report appears today in Perspective. The full study, including policy recommendations, can be found at www.pacificcouncil.org.

--Daniel Sneider
Foreign-affairs writer, Mercury News

After decades of regarding each other with wary suspicion, India and the United States have moved rapidly from uneasy cooperation to incipient partnership.

What brought about this shift? This is not a question for historians alone. The answer should guide not only the understanding of the past but also policies for the future.

One source of this change is geopolitics. The end of the Cold War removed the issue of India's relationship with the Soviet Union and lessened the U.S. reliance on Pakistan as an anti-Soviet ally. Americans came to see India as a strong regional power that could help to maintain stability and balance in a turbulent world. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks created a sense of common threat that unites strategists in both India and the United States.

The progress toward partnership can be traced in the increasing frequency of high-level interaction between leaders in both countries. The visit of then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to the United States in 1999, when he described the two countries as ``natural allies,'' was followed the next year by President Clinton's trip to India, the first by a U.S. president in 22 years. This was a watershed in Indo-U.S. relations, and that heightened pace has continued during the Bush administration, hopefully to include a visit by President Bush to India.

India and the United States will continue to have differences in their strategic views. For example, the U.S. relationship with Pakistan remains a source of concern and divergence. But the dynamic of partnership, regardless of who holds power in either country, remains strong.

To focus exclusively on geopolitics and security, however, misses the underlying driving force behind this voyage of rediscovery: economic and cultural globalization. The shift began with the decision of India in 1991 to end its long policy of import substitution and industrial protection and to open its economy for global competition. This led India to jettison autarkic economic policies and bred confidence in India's ability to compete. It also encouraged American business leaders, who had largely ignored India, to view the world's second-most-populous nation as a land of opportunity.

That profound redirection coincided with the information-technology revolution in the 1990s. India, drawing upon its longstanding investment in higher education and science, created a globally competitive software industry. Breakthroughs in telecommunications and the digital transmission of data radically lessened the barrier of geographic distance for many facets of commercial transactions. That revolution shifted power away from governments, empowering individuals and civil society.

Meanwhile, the IT revolution under way in the United States was fueled in part by a surge of immigration by Indian engineers and entrepreneurs, who became a key part of the economy and culture of Silicon Valley. These entrepreneurs in turn encouraged their American counterparts to seek new opportunities in India. An affluent and increasingly influential Indian diaspora based in the United States emerged, creating new bonds between the two countries.

Cultural exchange has grown alongside the economic and technological interaction. As India's youth have become globalized, they have shown a growing appetite for popular culture, much of it from the United States. And Indian cultural exports, from food to fashion to cinema, are finding a growing reception in the American marketplace.

All these breakthroughs have combined to drive a profound transformation of perceptions in both countries. Until the late 1990s, the average American thought of India rarely, if at all. For the vast majority of Americans, India was associated with poverty or by orientalized images of maharajahs, palaces and elephants, nostalgic pictures from the British Raj. Images of the United States as a set of Hollywood cliches -- violent, wealthy and arrogant -- also were common in India.

These stereotypical images, particularly of India in the United States, are giving way. For many Americans, India is now just as likely today to be associated with technological innovation as with grinding poverty, with hip fashion as with tigers and elephants, with the latest movie sensation as with sitar concerts.

Perhaps the most telling sign of the shift in U.S. perception is that India is now often referred to in American business conferences in the same breath with China. The two countries are paired as a common phenomenon, rising global economic powers that will dominate this century.

This change is even more evident on the West Coast, in places such as Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Seattle. The economy of this region is more tightly tied to Asia and the Pacific. The regional economy is more dependent on high technology, global culture such as the film industry and international trade. And in the Pacific West, the cultural impact of India and the growing presence of the Indian-American community are more strongly felt there than in much of the rest of the United States.

Globalization, of course, is not free from controversy in either country, controversy that plays out in the context of two vibrant democracies. In both cases, the interaction of the global economy brings not only benefits but also some painful changes. In the United States, the outsourcing of employment in the service sector to Indian software houses and call centers has triggered deep anxiety. There are growing concerns that the jobs that have been lost will not, as has been true in the past, be replaced by new jobs. Outsourcing made India -- for the first time in American history -- an issue in the 2004 presidential election.

In India, the stunning upset results of the 2004 parliamentary elections also reflected the uneven results of India's entry into the global economy. Rapid growth has rewarded the urban middle class far more than the rural poor. The gleaming shopping malls outside Delhi have not changed the lives of pavement dwellers or farmers. Indian voters demonstrated a ``revolution of rising expectations'' caused by India's entry into the global market. All classes in India want the government to move faster but also to do a better job of distributing the gains of economic change.

Despite these difficulties, there should be no retreat from the intertwining of India and the United States. Indeed, steps must be taken to accelerate the momentum of a transformation whose benefits flow both ways. Although the actions of governments are important, much of this change will necessarily remain in the hands of non-governmental actors, from the business community to educators and cultural institutions.

Strategic differences will certainly occur. But strengthened economic and cultural ties will enable both nations to ride over those differences with lesser bumps.

Vote with your wallet! I promptly dump any company I do business with if I call their customer service and get Bombay on the phone. Capital One sure ain't in my wallet just for that very reason. They are getting better and better at accent elimination, but you can still tell if you hit them with some fancy American words. Just say NO to Dell Computers and eBay! They all outsource their customer service, I am sure there are many many more. I saw a great teeshirt, it said on the front "I am not saying you did anything wrong, I said I am blaming you!" That goes for those mentioned above, they won't get my money!