Obama may be carrying idol of Lord Hanuman and admirer of Mahatma Gandhi.
But he is not a friend of India
In the recent US trip of Finance Minister P Chidambaram, his third in
recent months, nobody expected any downpour of American FDI to end the
unrelenting drought of dollars. Still, it was expected that there would be some
concrete developments on thorny bilateral economic issues, be it drug patent,
or the constant niggling by President Obama about an imaginary exodus of
American jobs to Bangalore.
For that matter, many in India are anxious to know how the US will
respond to the growing economic crisis in India, a nation which three
successive American presidents have described as an “important ally”. A foreign
reserve crisis is impending. India had short-term debt amounting to US $172
billion in end-March this year, which means it has to pay that much money to
creditors on or before 31 March 2014. It will knock off two-thirds of the
foreign reserve as of today. The bite may be even bigger if there is a new
crisis, putting us back to the 1991 situation where there were just enough
greenbacks to fund 15 days’ import. Can a part of the short-term debt,
mostly owed to American financiers, be rolled over? Or what?
Instead, what took place between the articulate Indian finance minister
and a phalanx of American bureaucrats and businessmen was a dialogue between the
deaf and the dumb. American investors of today seem no more generous than their
British indigo-planter forebears two centuries ago. They’re livid because the
Indian Supreme Court has thrown out the patent claim by Novartis, a
pharmaceutical MNC with its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, of Glivec, a
leukaemia drug. After it had gone off patent, Novartis put the stuff in a pill
and claimed it to be an innovation. The drug costs $75,000 a year in the US,
and $31,000 in India. However, the court upheld Indian authorities’ decision
that Novartis could not milk the drug any longer, and allowed generic
drug-makers to market it—at a dream price of $2,100 a year.
But don’t blame the irate American
businessman alone, when it comes to India, it is President Obama who has a chip
on his shoulder. It began pretty early when he, as a Senator, had pleaded with
Bush, the then President, to insert a clause in the contentious US-India civil
nuclear deal that would make it difficult for India to buy enriched uranium
from the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) without signing on the Non
Proliferation Treaty. On being elected, his inaugural list of Asian partners
included Pakistan, China, Afghanistan, South Korea and Japan, but not India.
The first two dozen international leaders to receive a call from Obama after he
assumed Presidency included Asif Ali Zardari, but not Dr Manmohan Singh. Even
Secretary Hillary Clinton, in her inaugural hop-on hop-off trip to Asia,
touched every capital except New Delhi.
The result is, India has dropped out
of America’s investment horizon. On the other hand, in the name of reforming
immigration, Obama took special care to introduce in the Immigration Bill, which
has been passed by Senate and is awaiting consideration of the House of
Representatives, a slew of clauses that would make things exceedingly difficult
for India, such as:
· H1B and L1 visas are priced too high,
thus making it next to impossible for Indian IT firms like Infosys and TCS to
send workers on specific projects to the US for a limited period;
· Companies that get 30% or more H1B
visa holders will have to pay new fees, a provision that makes it almost futile
for companies to structure their business models based on sending teams to work
onsite, or “body-shopping”, as the expression goes;
· In jobs, preference will be given to
students educated in the US, a clause that will create a “gold rush” for Indian
students to enroll in American colleges—a hugely expensive future national
passion; and,
· Strict restrictions to be put on
relatives entitled to migrate.
Obama reportedly carries an idol of
Lord Hanuman and admires Mahatma Gandhi. But he greatly dislikes their country.
He is currently breaking bread with the notorious Taliban, and has helped them
set up a spanking ‘international’ office at Doha. True to their style, the day
the Doha office was opened, the Taliban launched a rocket attack on an American
military base in Afghanistan, killing four US soldiers. It shows the utter
stupidity of Obama’s policy to play the ‘Afghanistan endgame’ by talking to an
unreformed Taliban before its planned exit from the country in 2014. It leaves
India frightfully insecure, with militant Islamic fundamentalism poised to
recapture its west to a depth of 1,500 miles, not to speak of a powerful and
cantankerous neighbor in the north. No wonder India is committing its last
shirt to buy arms.
An imperialist, like Winston Churchill, was churlish with India because
he thought the country could not rule itself. Unfortunately, Obama, the first
black US President, hates India not as a superior but like equals who hate each
other.
(The author is the National Editor of
Lokmat group)
