by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
It was a sun-washed morning in September last that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had arrived at White House in Washington, as a sort of oddball ("Bollywood star", as President Obama reminded him this week in Delhi), and far from a statesman of stature. The State Department thought he was not worth a state dinner. But Modi brushed the insult aside.Nobody knows what was in him that impressed Obama.
That was the overture. It became clear that, in five months flat, Obama and Modi have hit it off like a house on fire. Before an international media at Hyderabad House, following their delegation-level and one-on-one talks, they cracked friendly jokes at each other, with Modi referring to him by his first name, Barack. During talks at Hyderabad House, Modi made tea for Obama. The US President began his media address with pyar bhara namaskar, and thanked Modi for giving him opportunity for chai pe charcha. It was personal chemistry at its best. And that was evident from the moment Air Force One, with President Obama and First Lady Michelle on board, landed in Delhi. With no sign of jetlag after a day's journey from Andrews Air Base, Obama greeted his Indian friend with a warm hug, warmth that was absent when Chinese President Xi Jinping had arrived in Delhi last year or Russian President Vladimir Putin, for that matter.
On the first day of Obama's visit itself, it was clearly a success with much of the "deliverables" that experts were doubting.
The biggest of them is the Civil Nuclear Deal, signed between ex-PM Manmohan Singh and ex-President George W. Bush in his final year of presidency. It got caught in a cleft stick as India passed in 2012 its own nuclear liability law that puts the liability of an accident on the supplier, and not on the operator. Following this week's agreement, the Indian law stays but the operator will get global re-insurers' help in buying accident cover, though the cost will be predictably high. Moreover, the US has agreed to give up the "tracking option" it was demanding for further use of nuclear materials supplied by it. Instead it will have its own agents placed in IAEA to monitor upstream use of N-material.
In the recent Indo-US agreement, Modi has declared that "we have decided to take our defence cooperation to a new level". The two countries agreed to co-develop and co-produce advanced defence products, giving a new lease of life to the decade-old Defence Framework Agreement. Both Modi and Obama harped on their resolve to combat counter-terrorism, which implies induction into the Indian defence forces of game-changing devices, sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and a third aircraft-carrier for the Indian Navy being just a few of them.
For climate control, it is now clear that India will not have to make any immediate commitment on cutting emission during the ensuing talks in Paris this year. But, much to Obama's delight, Modi has expressed his keenness to go for clean energy in a big way. And he obtained Obama's nod for substantial US investment in the manufacture of solar cells and such other carbon-free energy sources. It is no secret that India has to switch off, literally, as an economic power if it cannot put to use its coal reserve, the fifth biggest in the world, however "dirty" the fuel is. America possesses an array of technology to make coal a lot cleaner which it does in its own thermal plants.
Obama and Modi agreed last year to raise their bilateral trade five-fold to $ 500 billion but it hit roadblock as US investors found their market access was limited. Besides, the refusal of India to provide patent protection, particularly for drugs, to the extent required by the Western businesses stood in the way of growth of US investment. Given India's poor penetration of medical insurance, and poverty, it may not be easy to please the global pharmaceutical majors. At the same time, though, the summit in Delhi has resolved that taxation on foreign companies would be no more arbitrary. And that's a large forward step for US investment. That brings us to an interesting question. What is the secret of this Modi-Obama chemistry? And, if it were to happen, why had the Obama administration dragged its feet on giving just a visa to Modi till he became prime minister? I think an answer to both these question is embedded in the Martin Luther King Jr moment. For Obama, an accomplished practitioner of modern democracy and a member of America’s largest minority community, it was a friendly nudge to Modi to forget the dark cloud of the 2002 Gujarat riots, wake up to what Alexis de Tocqueville described in his 18th century bookDemocracy in America as “tyranny of the majority”, and embrace pluralism as an inalienable feature of contemporary democracy. It is obvious that Obama has found a lot to admire in Modi, with his tea-boy origin and subsequent flowering as a leader whom the nation respects.
But why did his administration refuse to invite Arvind Kejriwal to the dinner at Rashtrapati Bhavan in the honour of President Obama ? Is it because election in Delhi is round the corner and Kejriwal is a challenger to Modi’s BJP? If so, it is a petty reason. At any rate, Kejriwal is not a towering figure. But if his non-violent street campaign is targeted against anything in particular, it is none but the tyranny of the majority. This is exactly the message Obama wanted Modi to hear at the memorial statue of Martin Luther King Jr in September last.
