Deepening Indo-US understanding
A clear sign of an unfolding Indo-US understanding is the passage of a Senate bill modifying previous legislation that made it mandatory for the Trump Administration to impose sanctions on countries such as India and Vietnam who traditionally met much of their defence requirements from Russia. Earlier, India had made a robust representation to Washington that its sanctions regime against Russia lacked the United Nations imprimatur, and hence would be unacceptable, putting at risk India’s blossoming ties with the United States.
American hysteria on the Russian threat has echoes of the McCarthy anti-Communist witch hunt of the early 1950s. However, that is in an internal matter for the American people to resolve. Any spillover into foreign policy would scarcely be in America’s national interest.
It is a strongly held Indian view that an unwilling Russia should not be driven into China’s gravitational orbit. Moscow will always be subject to its own longer-term geopolitical goals, as history has repeatedly shown; Soviet Russia aligned with India during the fractious years of the Sino-Soviet dispute, when, for a time Washington was Beijing’s ally against Moscow and Delhi. India cannot be expected to jettison its tried and tested Russian relationship at the bidding of a late comer third party. Russia is a great power in its own right and has been so since the era of Peter the Great, and will remain so, whatever the West may say or do. Alongside the United States it is the world’s foremost military superpower. It is not in India’s interest, nor should it be in America’s, to see the development of any sort of Russo-Chinese condominium on the Eurasian landmass.
This self-evident truth, it would appear, is making a welcome impact on the Trump Administration. As India will not dilute its sovereign right to make its own strategic choices on partners, there is enough space for good sense to prevail, and an agreeable Indian-American understanding on their respective security interests in Asia.
Chinese trade practices and naval aggrandizement in the South China Sea is a wakeup call to India and the United States. There is an unspoken but very real attempt by China to assert an hegemonic influence there and elsewhere The Chinese leadership appears to believe that the country’s historical moment has come. Its militarization of Tibet and its claims to India’s Arunachal Pradesh – a territory equivalent to the size of Switzerland – has to be treated with the utmost seriousness. Beijing’s peremptory economic blockade of Mongolia on the excuse that, Mongolia by inviting the Dalai Lama to pay a visit to the country had violated China’s ‘core interest,’ and would thus have to pay a price for its impertinence.
The United States has responded to the Chinese challenge by informing New Delhi that India has been given a priority status similar to that enjoyed by Washington’s NATO allies in the procurement of American dual-use defence equipment that would take India to the next level.
There are currently 36 countries on this STA-1 list, joining India, Japan and South Korea from Asia. With this agreement, India’s defence industry can get licences to manufacture these technologies domestically.
Ahead of the 2+2 dialogue between the Indian and US foreign and defence ministers on September 6, this deal lays the ground for further progress going forward. The Obama Administration’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ in substance was more a pivot to China His first visit to the continent was to Beijing, where he announced that China had a partnering role in the maintenance of peace in the Indian subcontinent.
In light of Beijing’s ‘all-weather ties’ with Pakistan, its refusal to place a known Pakistani jihadi on the UN terrorist list, to which the US and Russia have affixed their signatures, plus Beijing’s stubborn unwillingness to permit India to join the international Nuclear Technology Suppliers Group despite its proven track record on nuclear non-proliferation, in contrast to Pakistan’s transfer of nuclear weapon and missile technologies of Chinese provenance to North Korea and others. Again the US and Russia have supported India’s membership of this club. The Trump Administration will discuss these issues with China more robustly than the Obama dispensation ever did. We are heading for interesting times.
Attention to technology is an imperative
The first and second Industrial Revolutions guaranteed European ascendancy over the planet. The following revolutions led to the economic transformation of the United States from a largely agrarian society to an industrial and technological behemoth, a military superpower whose innovation and entrepreneurial energies placed it at the pinnacle of global authority.
Beyond this magic circle, Japan and Russia went about their modernization in similar, though not in identical vein. Japan was opened up to the world by Commodore Perry’s arrival from the United States, breaching the sanctified seclusion of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the convulsive change in the political order climaxed by the Meiji Restoration.
As the first Asian country to industrialize, Japan, for a while, became an inspiration for the emergent nations of the continent. Finally, the industrialization of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, and its frenetic pace in the 1930s was the transformative achievement in the enabling ‘Great Patriotic War’ to emerge victorious over Nazi Germany. In due course, the USSR was the first nation to send a satellite into space, followed by a manned spacecraft a few years later - the platform for contemporary Russia’s military equivalence to that of the United States.
Japan’s post-war reconstruction was based on the technologies of the Third Industrial Revolution. The country’s advance since has made it the third-largest economic power after the United States and China. China, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore are no longer Third World but First World economies.
India started her post-Independence era, socially backward, economically primitive, prey to severe food shortages if the rains failed. The pains of labour have often been acute, but the economic transformation has been sweeping, if haltuing, in parts. With the world’s sixth-largest economy and also the fast-growing large economy, a space power and much else including food security, the bedrock of the Indian performance has, however, been in the service sector whose driving force has been the Fourth Industrial Revolution based on Information Technology. India is now a global software power straddling continents. The next step, robotics, cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence are routes to the future.
What is thus required is a coherent technology policy through skills development. The institutions for these are mostly fledging.There must therefore be sustained coordination between government and the private sector to create the desired platform for the next level going forward. The entry of global specialists with a strong grounding in technology is the need of the hour. Bright young Indians have made it big in the US fulfilling the American dream. They have contributed in no small measure to the global technology renaissance. India has much to gain by drawing on attracting talent pool of the diaspora in whatever way possible to spur India’s rejuvenation. This surely is the challenge, among myriad challenges, facing India today.
Indo-UK heritage site overcomes commercial obstacle
The Strand Continental Hotel situated at the corner of the Strand and Aldwych, with a restaurant serving Indian cuisine and a bar on the floors below is the iconic India Club founded way back in 1951. Apart from the South Asian diaspora, the India Club restaurant and hotel managed most capably by Yagda Marker, was a favourite watering hole for students and academics from the London School of Economics and King’s College nearby. The relaxed atmosphere, drink in hand and a plateful of Indian savories or dining on Indian cuisine upstairs leavened with convivial conversation after a hard day was reviving.
Mr Marker has assiduously refurbished the hotel from its once down-at-heel furnishings. The cost of a room is eminently affordable for those lacking deep pockets. The owners of the property had planned to convert the building into a luxury hospitality establishment with prices to match. Permission to do was refused by Westminster Council, much to the satisfaction and delight of Mr Marker and India Club habitués. And those absent spirits who cherish warm memories of the place and its surroundings.
