The Great Expectations from India

I write this post after 3 weeks of getting clobbered by midterms and shellacked by assignments. The experience was made worse, knowing fully well that my commitment to blogging was becoming less credible by the day. Anyhow, the only vent to my thoughts I managed last week was a response to my friend Dan Michaeli's post about Indian foreign policy. In it, Dan argues that India's domestic politics often prevent it from working closely with the U.S., thus leading to a situation where it often makes demands but rarely reciprocates in the India-U.S. relationship. Here's my response:

Dan, I disagree with the premise that only domestic politics prevents India from a closer relationship with the U.S.

On trade and climate, India’s interests are very much those of a developing country, with 60% of the population engaged in agriculture (explaining being at loggerheads with the US at Doha) and 45% extremely poor (making it hard to accept legally binding emission cuts).

On Iran, while India does not support sanctions against it, it did vote against it at three IAEA resolutions between 2005 and 2009. These were significant moves for India, which has had warm relations with Iran since the heydays of nonalignment. In fact, this vote was criticized in many quarters as a test set up by the US for India during the nuke deal negotiations.

Also, the unwillingness to have a closer relationship is reciprocated by the US on an issue like Afghanistan. Both countries have a convergence of interest there, with India even more leery of any reconciliation with the Taliban (it was the only country to express dissent against negotiation with the Taliban at the recent London Conference). While it is unlikely to send troops there, it could have contributed to US efforts by supplying military trainers. But the idea was shot down during the US strategy review because of Pakistan’s apprehensions.

Finally, I take the point that there is a reflexive distrust of US geopolitical motives in certain Indian political circles. It was a significant political cost during the nuke deal negotiations as well. But it does not explain the divergence between India and the US on many issues. Divergence of interests does.

On a related note, Dan's post reminded me of a beautiful review that George Perkovich had written for Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi in 2007. In it, he placed U.S. expectations of India into historical perspective:

"To comprehend India's achievement, imagine if Mexico became the 51st of the United States, followed by Brazil, Argentina and the rest of Central and South America. Add Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to give this union the Sunni-Shia mix of India. The population then represented in Congress would still be smaller and less diverse linguistically, religiously, culturally and economically than India's. If such a state could democratically manage the interests and conflicts swirling within it, and not threaten its neighbors, the world should ask little else from it. If we were such a state, we would feel that our humane progress contributes so much to global well-being that smaller, richer, easier-to-manage states should not presume to tell us what to do."