by John Elliott
Tensions remained, however, especially over America’s closeness with Pakistan, and also because Washington viewed its relations with India through what was known as the India–Pakistan prism and did not see India as an individual subject. The tensions were underlined in July 2002 when Kanwal Sibal, who had just become India’s foreign secretary and describes himself as a ‘hard-nosed foreign policy realist’, accused America of intentionally giving Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf ‘a lot of room to play with ambiguities on terrorism’. Sibal said that this gave Musharraf ‘an alibi’ when terrorist attacks originating from Pakistan took place in Jammu and Kashmir. American priorities on the fight against terrorism, he added, were ‘not quite in phase’ with India’s because the US was less concerned about stopping terrorism in Kashmir than elsewhere in the world.12
Relations improved in June 2005, when a ‘New Framework for India-US Defence Relationship’ was agreed, followed a month later by a visit to Washington by Manmohan Singh, who was flattered and feted by Bush. The two leaders agreed to ‘transform the relationship’ between their two countries, with discussions on trade, science, technology and other areas, including defence.13 Three years later, after many setbacks, this led on to the 2008 nuclear deal. The nuclear potential was then stalled because India’s parliament insisted on foreign contractors taking a degree of liability for equipment failures, which was unacceptable internationally, especially for the US, which did not like India trying to re-write established international rules.
It is arguable how much this matters overall because the deal was never really about energy, even though it was paraded by the Indian and US governments in those terms with contract-hungry US nuclear power companies that used their lobbying clout and pushed for it in Washington. Ultimately, the contractor liabilities issue will be solved – US officials in favour of the deal hope this will happen soon because it would remove a negative point in the relationship that is often cited by powerful India-sceptics in Washington. India will then benefit long term from supplies of nuclear technology and uranium fuel from France, Russia and Australia as well as the US. Meanwhile a new ‘Strategic Dialogue’ was launched by the two countries in July 2009, following on from the nuclear deal, and that led to a range of consultations and links straddling subjects from counter-terrorism and space to clean energy and climate change, education and health.
Progress – and Myths
The relationship is still developing, sometimes bumpily, and it is not as deep as its supporters would like to claim. India has learned that it can say ‘no’ to the US, for example, by not breaking relations with Iran or with Myanmar (before both regimes softened their stance in 2013 and 2012), and by voting against the US (and Israel) on Palestine’s status in the UN.14The US has learned – maybe with some surprise – that India is not prepared to become an obedient ally, and that it will not dutifully follow American wishes on foreign policy or on quickly opening up foreign investment regulations to hungry US companies. Another show of India’s independence came in April 2011 on a billion-dollar multi-role combat aircraft fighter contract that the US had virtually assumed its companies would eventually win until India short-listed Dassault of France and Eurolighter, not Lockheed Martin or Boeing.15 The US had, however, by mid2012 received defence orders approaching $9bn over the previous ten years, with almost another $10bn in the pipeline, which made defence the most active area of co-operation.
The positives were neatly listed by Hilary Clinton, then the US Secretary of State, at the end of talks in India in July 2011.16 ‘We have worked together for the important task of preventing cyber attacks on our respective infrastructures. We are talking about a new bilateral investment treaty that will build on the 20 per cent increase in trade we’ve seen just this last year. And we have watched as trade is increasingly flowing in both directions. We have new initiatives linking students and businesses and communities, and one of my personal favourites is the Passport to India, a programme designed to bring more American students to study in India to match the great numbers of Indian students that come to America to study, because we want to create those bonds between our young people and our future leaders’. Her talks on that visit also covered anti- terrorism, economic ties, nuclear projects and defence co-operation. An American foreign affairs specialist said in Delhi a year later: ‘We are better off if you are free and confident. Even if India annoys the US all the time, it’s still better to have a strong India... Even if we don’t get returns and the balance is in the red on nuclear contracts, Iran and the MRCA (the Indian fighter jet contract), it’s better we are aligned and work on our common world view’.17
There are however sceptics about the relationship in India, as well as those in the US who strongly believe India should be more docile and subservient. There will always be headlines about differences. Usually these will be on issues such as Iran and there is also concern in India about how determined the US is to support Asian countries against the sort of Chinese aggression seen in the East China Sea. There will also be unexpected rows, as happened in December 2013 when US law officers suddenly arrested Devyani Khobragade, India’s 39-year-old deputy consul general in New York, just as she was dropping her daughter at school. Accused of visa fraud over an Indian maid who had worked in her home, she was handcuffed, strip-searched, underwent DNA swabbing, and was held in a cell with others accused of crimes including drugs till she was released on $250,000 bail.18
This led to a dispute over Khobragade’s diplomatic status and provoked a furious reaction from India, which cancelled various diplomatic privileges that the US enjoyed in India but did not give to India’s diplomats in America. Security barricades that blocked a road adjacent to the embassy in Delhi’s diplomatic area were dramatically removed. India’s foreign service officials were united in condemning the US, led by Sujatha Singh, India’s new foreign secretary, who had been in Washington for talks the day before the arrest and was apparently not consulted.
The sharp reaction – and media frenzy – in India flushed out a latent anti-America feeling born of resentment of the way the US threw its weight around. As Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution in Washington was reported saying in the Financial Times, ‘we have created a myth that India is pro-America and that is not the case’.19
Before this row broke out, the relationship had been drifting because of a lack of care in both countries with a weakly-led Indian embassy in the US and an American ambassador in Delhi who, though able, could not excite political support back home. There were few, if any, committed supporters in the Obama administration, and there were many officials and commentators in India who enjoyed taking a more aggressive stance. The drift had increased as the Indian government and the country’s economy became weaker. The strategic dialogue was continuing but no top leader in either country was consistently pushing it ahead. officials also said that there were not enough senior diplomats and other experts, especially in India, to run all the areas of co-operation effectively. Adding to the problem was what two policy analysts had earlier called the ‘inertia of the mid-level bureaucracy on both sides’ steeped in ‘residual institutional memories’.20 President Barack Obama had other priorities, though the US had had India in its sights when he responded to China’s growing regional ambitions by launching a new ‘pivot’ towards Asia in November 2011 (later softened to a ‘rebalancing’ of America’s Asia focus). Manmohan Singh also had other priorities in India, so it was back to chalta hai.
Kanwal Sibal, while recognizing the benefits of the new relationship, reflected the continuing wariness of America felt by many when he told me a year before the Khobragade row that the US had done more than any other country to damage India strategically over the previous 60 years. It had done this ‘directly by curbing the development of India’s strategic capabilities, by imposing nuclear and space and missile related sanctions, and by applying stringent export controls on transfers of high-technology’.21 It had also pressured India on territorial issues by
backing Pakistan on the disputed territory of Kashmir. ‘Now the US is undoing a lot of those negative attitudes and expect us to be pro-them, but we say “you are only undoing things you did against us, so we owe you little”. By contrast, says Sibal, who was ambassador in Moscow after retiring as foreign secretary, ‘Russia has rarely let India down’.
Much has however been achieved, and a lasting ‘strategic partnership, not an alliance’ (as Menon put it22) is in place after a decade of work. How it develops will depend largely on how America’s initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region play out, especially with China. India’s role will depend on its reactions as those events unfold, and whether it has the will – and maybe one day the economic strength – to play a leading role in world affairs. Either way, the new relationship with the US has to be seen as a positive development, provided India maintains its independence as a friend and occasional partner but not an ally.
Notes
1. http://www.ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/manmohan-singh-leads-india-into-a-nuclear-%E2%80%9Ctr yst-with-destiny%E2%80%9D/
2. Open Doors Data, Institute of International Education, http://www.iie.org/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/Fact-Sheets-by-Country/2013
3. ‘India and the USA’, Speech by National Security Advisor Shri Shivshankar Menon, Aspen Institute India, 20 September 2013, http://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/22238/Speech+by+National+Security+Advisor+Shri+Shiv+Shankar+Menon+on+India+and+the+USA+at+Aspen+Institute+India+September+20+2013
4. Shekhar Gupta, ‘Vajpayee’s Atal’, Indian Express, 6 October 2012, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/national-interest-vajpayee-s-atal/1012767
5. http://www.ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/manmohan-singh-wins-the-first-stage-of-his-nuke-gamble/
6. http://www.ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/bribery-claims-cloud-india-parliament-ahead-of-us-nuke-deal/
7. Lalit Mansingh, former India foreign secretary, writing in The Economic Times, 26 December 2010 http://www.articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-12-26/news/27609758_1_foreign-policy-global-stage-nuclear-tests
8. Indian diplomat posted to Washington DC after nuclear tests, in conversation with JE, October 2012
9. JE, ‘How Clinton began a new love affair: Not long ago, China was America’s big friend in Asia. All of a sudden, it’s India’, New Statesman, 28 March 2000, http://www.newstatesman.com/node/137270
10. Robert Blackwill in conversation with JE, October 2012
11. Geoffrey R. Pyatt, US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary South and Central Asian Affairs (posted as senior official in US Embassy Delhi in early 2000s), speaking at Brookings-FICCI Dialogue on the India-US. Strategic Partnership, Delhi, 10 October 2012, http://www.newdelhi.usembassy.gov/sr101612.html; http://www.ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/manmohan-singh-wins-the-first-stage-of-his-nuke-gamble/
12. ‘New tensions in Kashmir – What the peacemakers can expect’, The Economist, 12 July 2002, http://www.economist.com/node/1227915
13. Joint Statement Between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, The White House office of the Press Secretary, 18 July 2005, http://www.georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/07/20050718-6.html
14. ‘World embraces Palestine; snubs US, Israel’, TNN, 1 December 2012, http://www.articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-12-01/us/35530380_1_observer-state-palestinian-authority-palestinian-victory
15. http://www.ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/india-takes-a-nam-route-on-11bn-fighter-contract/
16. Hilary Clinton, ‘India and the United States: A Vision for the 21st Century’, 20 July 2011, Chennai, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/07/168840.htm
17. Speaking in September 2012 at an Observer Research Foundation seminar in Delhi on ‘Chatham House’ rules
18. https://www.ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/anti-america-and-anti-corruption-are-key-issues-as-india-general-election-looms/
19. ‘Maid in Manhattan drama exposes rift’, Financial Times, 20 December 2013, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e0bfdc54-6999-11e3-aba3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2otaUNY9F
20. Seema Sirobhi and Samir Saran, ‘Looking beyond the honeymoon’, The Hindu, 29 September 2012, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/looking-beyond-the-honeymoon/article3946259.ece
21. Conversation with JE, September 2012
22. Speaking at Brookings-FICCI Dialogue on the India-US Strategic Partnership, Delhi, 10 October 2012
VII
INDIA’S TRYST WITH REALITY
Conclusions
India has been in a state of denial for years. It is rightly proud of its vibrant and chaotic democracy that has survived and been accepted almost without question across this vast and diverse country for over 65 years. But it is in denial because it has not been prepared to recognise that the vagaries of democracy are providing smokescreens that obfuscate many of the negative aspects of how the country works. Democracy creates an environment where jugaad fixes are easy, and where the failures of the system in terms of poor governance and weakened institutions make the fatalism of chalta hai a welcome safehaven. Democracy has therefore become an unchallengeable fig leaf covering what is not achieved. It allows the negative and underperforming aspects of Indian life to flourish, and it blocks changes and acts as an excuse for what is not being achieved.
The country can no longer afford to allow this to continue. If it does, systems will deteriorate further, possibly leading to implosions as the functioning of institutions is undermined and destroyed. India is far too large and diverse for a revolution to gain hold and dramatically change the way that it is run, but implosion, where government authority crumbles, systems break down, society becomes more lawless, and investment and growth slumps, can already be seen.
This is not an argument for doing away with democracy, but to recognise and change the negative way in which it operates. Democracy has helped to hold India together since independence, providing an outlet for people’s frustrations and anger, sometimes ousting prime ministers, chief ministers and their governments. Though far from perfect, it has given the great mass of the population a feeling that they have a say in how the country is run, however faint and rare that may be and however much they are cheated and maltreated by those they elect. But it has also provided an excuse and a cover for the gradual criminalisation of politics that has been allowed to grow for decades to such an extent that election campaigns are distorted, large bribes are paid when coalitions are being formed, and many members of parliament and state assemblies have criminal charges pending against them, often for serious offences.
Democracy is also used as an excuse for ineffective government. The most recent examples of this have come with the coalitions of the past two decades, especially in the past ten years. Manmohan Singh has attempted to pass off prime ministerial vacillation in policy and questionable decision-making as the inevitable result of the ‘compulsions of coalition government’,1 and has allowed opposition from other parties to become an excuse for years of policy delays. But, while the recent years have been bad, the problems are deeper and will not be solved simply by switching to another prime minister or political party that carries the baggage of the past. The mission of legitimate governments should be to create inclusive economic development with a sharing of wealth and governance by strong, impartial institutions. On that count, India has failed as corruption and bad governance have facilitated the emergence of a self-serving political system, a politicised bureaucracy, an unprofessional judiciary, and mindless and often cruel policing.
Consequently, the role of politics, democracy, governments, institutions, laws and regulations, which were lauded 20 to 30 years ago as India’s special strengths, have been progressively undermined. They have been replaced by arbitrary powers wielded by individuals, be they ministers, bureaucrats, policemen, or regional politicians and gang bosses. Speaking with the experience of having worked with India’s oil and other ministries as a
former chairman of Shell India, Vikram Singh Mehta says institutions are ‘so hollowed out that there is a vacuum and we don’t know who is exercising power’.2 Senior bureaucrats talk about the difficulty of getting officials down the line to follow established procedures and implement decisions. Ministers and officials are reluctant to write notes on policy papers and take decisions because of possible later accusations, fair or unfair, of corruption or other faults, as was seen in the coal and other scandals. Democracy is also a drag on development because, while it has rightly opened the way for dissent and opposition to projects, no effort had been made to curb its misuse by vested interests who corruptly manipulate policies and government action. This has contributed to India becoming an increasingly unpredictable, unreliable, uncompetitive and even difficult place to live and do development and business.
Ungovernable India
‘India has always been ungovernable – the only difference now is that we want it to be so’, a leading newspaper editor said to me, only half-jokingly, when I was writing an article for the New Statesman in 2002 and a BJP-led government was in power.3 The first part of that remark reflected the view that India has always been too large to be run efficiently from the national capital and that partnership was needed, but rarely achieved, with state governments.
There has also always been a sense that India’s massive problems of poverty and backwardness defy effective government and are too big to be solved – a problem that is growing as aspirations expand and several million people flood the job market every year. I suggested that acceptance of the ungovernable idea stemmed from the country’s ‘fatalistic and (traditionally) easy-going Hindu culture’ – a suggestion that provoked intense criticism when the article was reprinted in Outlook magazine. In this book, I have taken that view further with the theme that jugaad and chalta hai provide the approaches of quick fixes and fatalism that resist basic change.