Foreign policy, saat samundar paar

After its usual procrastination and unwarranted suggestions from any number of experts, the Prime Minister’s office finally confirmed that while in New York, he would meet with his counterparts from Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Within hours the encounter with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was in the balance as Indian security personnel battled an unprecedented attack from across the border at the Samba army camp in the Kathua district of Jammu. Even as the terrorists claimed 12 victims our opposition parties began their shrill, oft-repeated demand to cancel what would have been the first meeting with recently-elected third time Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. So far at least, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has steadfastly refused to back down.

Sadly our media and the Indian opposition treats high level meetings as a reward, instead of occasions for exchange of views and efforts to build trust with neighbours, especially Pakistan. This is in the vapid American tradition of refusing to recognise countries such as the People’s Republic of China for 20 years because it was a Communist regime, or refusing to have diplomatic relations with Iran for 30 years in order to isolate and tarnish their international standing. Even this delusion was available to it because of its super power status and lucky geography, separated as it is by oceans from its targets. Neither indemnity is available to us in our dealings with immediate neighbours with whom we have a shared tragic history shaded into a contentious present.

If we must emulate the U.S. then it should be U.S. President Obama’s immediate outreach to newly elected Iranian president Rouhani who can be most helpful to a war-weary, politically paralysed and economically distracted America in addressing the crisis in Syria, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and managing the Shia Sunni rivalry tearing the Muslim world apart. Of course Rouhani stands to gain too by the mitigation of punishing U.S. led sanctions against the withering Iranian economy, especially its oil exports. Even if the results take time to mature, India would also benefit from improving U.S.-Iran relations.

But the first port of call for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on this visit to the U.S. is a bilateral with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington. Unfortunately despite the depth and spread that bilateral relations have acquired since the signing of the U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement in 2008, it is being disparaged as a last-ditch effort to revive a stagnating relationship. The U.S. is our largest trading partner and intense exchanges are conducted across dozens of subject areas ranging from alternate energy to natural disasters to technical education. We conduct the most joint military exercises together, purchase defence equipment to the tune of billions of dollars and look to commence co-production of hi-tech defence equipment. However, it is simultaneously true that the U.S. has been cavalier about India’s vital interests in many issues including the endgame in Afghanistan, energy imports from Iran, and continuing deadly terrorist attacks from Pakistan. Nor has it been publicly sympathetic about the pressure that China exerts on our northern border, even while it seeks partnership in its pivot to Asia.

We should neither underestimate the U.S. for its relative decline nor overestimate its significance as the only superpower in our local problems. It is a relationship that has value in and of itself for its wealth of hi-tech and educational institutions as well as the interests of the Indian Diaspora. It is also valuable for our global positioning.

Surely, neither India nor the U.S. have fulfilled all the commitments that flowed out of the civil nuclear energy agreement signed in August 2008. The forthcoming meeting with Obama will change nothing because by a combination of leaks and media pressure, the government has been forced to concede that it will not be able to mitigate the concerns of American producers of nuclear energy equipment on liability requirements. More understanding by political, business and media elites in both countries is needed, so that initiatives underway can mature.

We must hope that despite the massive and unseemly pressure being exerted by the National Manufacturers Association of America, the prime minister will not concede to their unreasonable, unfair and hypocritical demands to change Indian policy and practice in trying to retain some preferential access to stimulate domestic manufacturing and using provisions in international intellectual properties rights to protect the rights of the poor to access life saving drugs. This does not mean that we should not be open to the expression of legitimate concerns on how erratic our policy-making, especially fiscal, has been, recently. But it also bears keeping in mind that just as the us federal reserve is mandated to make policy taking into account American economic imperatives not the negative impact it may have on other economies, equally the Indian government must make policy to revive our economy, not to generate employment in the United States.

Finally, if the U.S. Congress continues to be bloody-minded in targeting Indian information technology companies in its new immigration legislation, then perhaps this is the shock that Indian IT needs to change its own outmoded and losing business model.

At any time what we achieve with the U.S. is no substitute for what we must achieve in our neighbourhood. Of immediate importance are meetings Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will have will be with his South Asian counterparts. The meeting with Nawaz Sharif will be significant even if there is no progress on specific issues such as trade and terrorism by the Pakistan side.

With Bangladesh, the government really needs to hang its head in shame that it could not even introduce the Land Boundary Bill in the last session of Parliament after the Awami League government had fulfilled numerous and difficult assurances relating to ending safe haven for terrorists from the North East, ULFA etc. This, at a time when the Sheikh Hasina government is in a life-and-death struggle to revive the secular impulse of its independence movement and the character of Bangladeshi nationalism against a tide of political Islam and intolerance all across the Muslim world.

With Nepal, it is important to reiterate the need to hold the next election since its Constitution-making efforts have gotten nowhere.

Our media distorts the substance of our relationships by acting hysterically over what would be normal interaction with neighbours. The weakness of our government is that it feels the need to respond to every demand from an oftentimes uninformed media. Perhaps the only way we will now be able to have a foreign policy is by conducting it overseas, saat samundar paar.

Neelam Deo is Director of Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations and former Ambassador to Denmark and former Joint Secretary for Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh.

Manjeet Kriplani is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations.

This blog was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

For interview requests with the author, or for permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in.