COLUMN: Trump, Hillary Clinton didn’t react to Modi’s speech.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: To put the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic address to the US Congress on Wednesday in perspective: will his four visits to the United States and seven meetings with President Barack Obama in two years pay off in the long run to further ties between the two nations? Especially if the Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump calls the White House his next home come January 2017 after the elections this November?
Did Modi miss a trick in not denouncing and chastising (in a subtle, nuanced manner) the hostile (bordering on puerile, but insulting) rhetoric of Trump with regard to Muslims, immigrants, H-1B visa workers, Indian IT companies, women, call centers, and American companies who manufacture in India?
Yes. And No.
Yes – to Modi missing a trick or two in not spelling out succinctly (in diplomatic parlance, of course) India’s dislike for the insulting rhetoric against it by Trump in his campaign trail speeches and promises.
And no – Modi’s admirable Americanized speech, with myriad references to cult figures like Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman and Martin Luther King, with a hearty clap for fallen soldiers and a mention of his visit to the Arlington National Cemetery, to forge the destinies of India and US together, would unfortunately be only like rubble after an earthquake in Nepal, if Trump comes to power, sticks his jaw out, and pouts with conviction those famous words that has galvanized nativists, “America First.”
Perhaps, more than any other country on Earth – except for China – India would be the hardest hit if Trump comes to power, fulfils his vile promises to castigate certain nations for no fault of their own.
Some of the repercussions for India if Trump is the next US President and follows through with his rhetoric, on:
To ban Muslims from visiting America – India has 180 million Muslims as per the 2011 census; the most for any non-Muslim nation. To ostracize Muslims would also galvanize the ultra-right Hindutva brigade to sharpen their communal attacks on minorities, including Christians. It would certainly be the beginning of India’s biggest and cataclysmic diplomatic rift with the US.
To ban/put a moratorium on H-1B, other work visas – Remittances to India stood at $72.2 billion in 2015, accounting for over 4% of the country’s GDP. Needless to say, if remittances nosedive and Forex dips, it would be a hard body blow to recover from. India and the US would enter into a full-blown spat at the WTO.
To punish/force American manufacturers to abandon outsourcing and create jobs at home – Of course, no disputing that America’s manufacturing is in a shambles, compared to 50 years ago. In 1965, manufacturing in the US accounted for 53% of the economy. In 2004, however, it accounted for just 9%. But to force American companies to abandon India would be crippling for the latter, which, despite its robust growth of more than 7%, need to sustain creating around a million jobs a month.
Vijay Govindarajan and Gunjan Bagla, writing in the Harvard Business Review, last September, had pointed out some key US companies who are making heady progress in sales, and creating jobs, in India. It included Abbott, which built a manufacturing facility in Jhagadia, Gujarat. In 2014, its 14,000 employees in India generated $1.09 billion in sales. Cummins manufacture its engines, generators, and turbochargers in India to export across the globe. The company has 20 manufacturing plants in India, compared to Abbott’s three; one-sixth of Cummins’ 54,000 worldwide employees currently work in India. GE has already 10 factories in India, with its new factory in Pune serving as a global supply source for a number of its diverse businesses.
More recently, Amazon and Apple have committed billions of dollars to set up research facilities and manufacturing units.
“…from India’s perspective, manufacturing is probably the only way to lift half a billion more of its population out of poverty,” Govindarajan and Bagla wrote then.
India would be OK to have Trump send his son on frequent tours to India to scout for more real estate partners, franchise Trump Towers, in cities outside of Pune, Mumbai and Gurgaon, where they have a presence at present.
But India also had a chance to send a strong message, through Modi, that it would be a great partner to the US, as long as it’s respected, its opinion not disregarded with impunity, despite whomsoever comes to the White House.
Modi had the perfect opportunity, and the right audience to leverage some resistance to Trump’s nefarious plans. He didn’t avail of it.
A reporter for The Indian Express, Shubhajit Roy, who watched Modi speak, noted that in his 45-minute speech, he got applauded for a total of 64 times, used the word “partnership” to describe Indo-US ties, a total of 13 times.
But the reality is that while Modi during his US visit did achieve a crucial step toward ratification of the Paris agreement to limit greenhouse gases, bringing the accord close to full implementation, as noted by The New York Times (an accord Trump said he would disregard if elected), as well as striking a deal where India will buy six nuclear reactors from Westinghouse by June 2017, and got the US to formally recognize India as a major defense partner, that speech of his to the US Congress evinced zero interest from either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump – neither of whom reacted to it – as well as major networks.
Despite Modi’s speech being smooth, intelligent, calibrated, with plenty of research thrown in – as much as perhaps McDonald’s did when they introduced their masala burger to cater to Indian taste – and some humor thrown in too, it lacked bite, to emphasize to legislators across the aisle that India would not easily be bullied to oblivion by the likes of Trump.
In Modi’s defense, it must be also pointed out that in a recent interview to The Wall Street Journal, before he left for his trip to the US, he had declined to comment on Trump’s rhetoric against Muslims and immigrants, waving it off as campaign talk.
But Modi, his advisers and Indian diplomats know too well that the reason Trump is up there within sight of the White House is he has promised the American public, or at least those who vote for him, the chance to hit the piñata – comprising of all the cumulative fears he has roused against people who are not Caucasians.
Those American voters would not care for Modi and his grandiose talk on Capitol Hill, if Trump comes to power. They would demand of Trump to fulfill his promises, especially pertaining to those against Muslims, H-1B visa workers, and to bring back manufacturing to America.
Perhaps Modi’s best bet to avoid a faux pas with the US would be to hope Clinton assumes office.
(Sujeet Rajan is Editor-in-Chief, The American Bazaar. Follow him @SujeetRajan1)
1 Comment
Well what do you expect? Modi and Trump are both right-wing neocons.