Singh may not want the job anymore, says former State Dept. South Asia chief.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Dr. Walter Andersen is the program head of South Asian studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) with the graduate department of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University. A former chief of the State Department’s South Asia Division, he was previously also special assistant to the US Ambassador to India and a member of the Policy Planning Staff in Washington, DC.
In an exclusive interview with The American Bazaar, Andersen discussed the history of India’s current political and economic scenario, where India may be headed in the near future with regards to both those realms, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s upcoming visit to Washington, DC., and predicts who may emerge as the leader of the nation in the next year’s general elections.
Excerpts from the interview:
The numbers for July were just released yesterday and they indicate that imports into the US from India totaled $3.96 billion, an increase from the $3.42 billion in June. Yet the rupee continues to flounder and the Indian economy struggles to stop the bleeding. Why hasn’t the increase in flow of goods from India to America helped the Indian economy?
Because there are a whole range of issues [regarding] economic performance, including status of rupee; trade is only one of them. Now India is a much more significant trading partner than it was 10 years ago, when it actually had relatively low levels of trade. But the actual quantum of trade, in comparison to some of our other trading partners, is still relatively low; for example, it’s much lower than it is with Mexico, with China, Japan, the European Union countries, and [some] others as well. So it’s a very small part; it does play a role, but it’s not that significant a role
In his recent visit to the US, Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon said that US-India relations have increases tremendously and that there are at least 32 separate dialogues occurring between the two democracies. Where do you see this relationship going in the next few years, both politically and economically?
I think there will continue to be improvement in both. One only has to remember the sour relations between the US and India for most of the period from India’s Independence in 1947 through to the mid and late 1990s. The really dramatic change took place in 20008 with the exemption that was made for India on the nuclear bill that was passed in the US congress and then passed through the international community due to US pressure. Why was that so important? Because prior to that bill, India had been denied the import of nuclear fuel and technology because it refused to sign the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT), and it did not sign it because [the NNPT] said that no country that did not possess a nuclear weapon in 1968 – when the treaty was actually worked out – could get one in the future.
In 1968, India was not one of the five powers that had [nuclear weapons], so it did not sign the treaty because it didn’t want to be at a strategic disadvantage against nearby China, who did have nuclear weapons. By [the US] pushing, [countries] recognized the international importance and strategic importance of India. The Prime Minister at the time, Manmohan Singh, also pushed it because he recognized that at well. It was really transformational for the US-India relationship. What had happened when the Cold War ended [was that] the US and India still had a rather cool relationship, and it did not reflect the realities of the post-Cold War era. There was still a large amount of suspicion from each regarding the other, including those in the bureaucracies and the ruling parties, so something was needed. Both Manmohan Singh and President Bush realized, [as well as] their chief foreign policy people, that they needed something dramatic to transform the relationship. People often forget now, years later when relations are fairly normal, that relations have been largely cool for many years.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be visiting Washington, DC at the end of September. Singh’s days as the PM of India seem to be numbered; he is riding off into the sunset and various politicians are being groomed as his successor. So what, then, is the purpose of Singh’s visit this time? What impact will this visit and its accomplishments – or lack thereof – do for his legacy as PM?
Well as you said, there are already those being groomed to replace Singh, [like] Narendra Modi, who is likely to become Prime Minister if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) can form a coalition government. It’s still uncertain who would be the Prime Minister if the Congress would form the coalition government, and that’s not totally unheard of. It’s still possible that Singh could become Prime Minister again, but that’s unlikely; I don’t think so. I think that he probably doesn’t want another five years of the grueling existence that being Prime Minister, or the head of any country, is. As to why he’s coming here – I think in part because he’ll be at the annual meetings of the United Nations (UN) He was invited to come to Washington, [and] this would probably be his last time to visit the city during his tenure as Prime Minister. This is also the site, in some sense, where his greatest foreign policy triumph took place, and that is the agreement to making India an exception to the 1970 NNPT. If you recall, the Obama administration continued that [as well]. Obama, in his trip to India in 2010, called for India’s permanent membership on the UN Security Council, and then Secretary of State [Hillary Rodham] Clinton next year in a speech in Chennai said India should play more of an active role in world affairs, [which] suits US interests. So he is coming to a country where he will be welcomed. But there is something else he needs to do – there is a sense in both countries that the forward momentum [in the US-India relationship] has stalled, and he needs to demonstrate when he’s here that India is a place where people can do business. There is a growing complaint that India is a difficult place to do business – in part because of the maze of regulations, in part bc of corruption, and in part of the inordinate bureaucratic delays in decision-making – and so he has to convince prospective investors. That’s needed because the Indian economy has dropped to a 5% GDP growth rate, which is only about half of what it was a few years ago. That needs to improve. Now the elections are about a year away, so my guess is that he won’t be able to make many commitments about new steps that’ll encourage investment, but he has to give the impression I think that India is a place where one can do business.
One of the things that will almost certainly be discussed during Manmohan Singh’s visit to DC will be the US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement. India also recently bought a cache of Howitzer missiles from the US, too. Why is India so apparently eager to arm itself?
Because it lives in a dangerous world. It has in its neighborhood a large China, which has been more assertive in the last few years. [It has] also Pakistan next door. In the case of both those countries, you have a history of tension and warfare and unresolved boundary issues between the two. India also is spending much more money on its Air Force and Navy – that is, projectile capabilities – because it has sea lanes to protect. Ninety percent of India’s external trade is by sea, across the Indian Ocean. Some two-thirds of all imported oil and gas India gets comes from the Persian Gulf region, and that has to come by tanker as well. So the protection of those Indian Ocean sea lanes, both from piracy and terrorist activities, is extremely important for India’s well-being. And [also] because India’s trading more; its trade has actually increased significantly in the past several years. It’s getting more raw materials for its manufacturing base. It needs to trade for its economy to keep growing, so it needs to protect its assets overseas.
A lot of Indian companies, and companies that hire a lot of Indian workers, are fighting the Gang of Eight bill because they feel it will limit Indian immigration to the US and could have an adverse effect on the already unstable Indian economy. Do you feel that this fear is justified?
I think the latter part is an exaggeration. Under the present system in any case, Indian companies in terms of outsourcing and other forms of technology, have done relatively well. It really hasn’t adversely affected them all that much. I’m not sure how this [debate over the Gang of Eight bill] will end because it’s still being debated back and forth. And there are certain views, as you’ve just noted, about many Indian companies wanting easier access to the US. That, in fact, may happen because we have a technical need for that, but the final outcome will be the result of the maneuverings between all sorts of stakeholders on this issue. The fact that a bill hasn’t been passed yet, after years of debate, is a sign of how difficult it’s going to be
Should India have anything to say about a US intervention into Syria? If so, what? If a potential US involvement in Syria threatens to throw off the already delicate political balance of the region, what will that do to India’s interests in the region?
Indians typically have opposed intervention and have preferred a negotiated settlement, and my guess is that they would in this case as well. That’s not to say that they support the use of the chemical weapons – they don’t, and they have spoken out against that – but they really have not been very supportive of the notion of any kind of intervention in the affairs of another country. And they have an issue at home that tends to reinforce that issue, and that’s Kashmir. [India] has complained long and bitterly about interference in Kashmir by forces from Pakistan and elsewhere, and they don’t like to see [intervention] used as a technique in other places, so they would like to see some sort of negotiated settlement in Syria. And then there’s also an Indian Diaspora in Syria that they need to protect, and India has had a record of fairly good relations with Syria.
Tensions between China and India have risen recently also, specifically military tensions surrounding the location of the borders between the two nations. Does the problem between the two countries really come down to something so simple?
To a large extent, I think that’s true. The actual “border” was drawn in the early part of the last century, using maps that were not all that accurate and with lines drawn in pencil. And a pencil line on a map like that is about 20 miles wide. So you have this uncertainty as to exactly where the line should be drawn between the two countries. One of the things the two sides need to do is come to some sort of mutual agreement as to where the [border] line needs to be.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com