OBAMA: Good or Bad for India THE GEORGE W.

BUSH years were good for India, and the civil nuclear agreement is proof of it. This is why the US President who has just demitted office bitterly criticised across the globe for American unilateralism in world affairs, for the invasion of Iraq on false premises, and for much else remained popular in this country until the very end. He reversed an estrangement of a half century in the course of which India had come to expect nothing but rebuffs and disappointment at the hands of Washington. President Clinton, a Democrat, too had opportunities to re-configure ties with India when the Cold War (during which India was perceived by the West to be pro-Soviet) ended. But this country figured in his scheme only as an entity to be hectored, not a democracy to be shown friendship and consideration. Is President Barack Obama, also a Democrat, going to be different? What should we expect from him? The truth is we dont know. Mr Obama was a first-term senator when he won the presidency. As such, his politics has not been tested over a span of time, in varying conditions. But as a candidate he swept people around the world off their feet with his thoughtful charm, and his uplifting rhetoric holding out vistas of change. All we really know of the new Presidents politics is that he had a liberal voting record in his one term in the senate but appealed to Republicans. A writer in the New Yorker thought this was because Mr Obama has the ability to present liberal goals in conservative language. But also on account of his view of history, his respect for tradition, and his belief that change can only be very, slow in coming. Is he the archetypal Democrat, then, or is he not? Will he show the same (Western liberal) streak that the young British foreign secretary David Miliband did on a visit to India recently, and proceed to suggest that there was no point expecting Pakistan-based jihadis not to strike so long as the Kashmir issue wasnt resolved to the satisfaction of the extremists. Even the external affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee, doesnt have the answer to these questions. Speaking recently in the context of Hamas rocket attacks into Israel that appeared to be the proximate cause of the mayhem caused by Israeli troops in Gaza, Mr Obama noted, No democracy can tolerate such damage to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror. It will be interesting to see if the President will be ready to apply such a formulation to the India-Pakistan context in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. The difference, of course, is that Israel forms the cornerstone of US policy in West Asia. In South Asia, an analogous position has been enjoyed by Pakistan while Indias ties with America remained adversarial for half a century, a situation that came to be corrected only under the recent President Bush. Not long ago, the President described Afghanistan and Pakistan as the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism. He also observed, There is no answer in Afghanistan that does not confront the Al Qaeda and Taliban bases along the border. And there will be no lasting peace unless we expand the spheres of opportunity for the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Frankly, positions such as these are not very different from those held in the Bush era. The Bush period will go down as a conspicuous failure in terms of precipitate decline in the security situation in Afghanistan. The issue would therefore largely turn on the quality of implementation, on setting benchmarks of behaviour for Pakistan. It is far from clear if Mr Obama will or can go that far, although only recently there has been talk of US non-military aid being tied to showing results on fighting the Taliban on the Afghanistan border. That course has proved dry, but there are no signs yet of President Obama resiling

from it. There are two somewhat positive indications on the economic side that New Delhi might like to factor in. In her Senate confirmation hearings, Hillary Clinton, the new secretary of state, said she would like to build on the economic and political partnership with India. Not all countries found a mention in the proceedings and India did. But the gushing hype of the Bush era, when ties with this country would be routinely described as a strategic partnership, was absent. Ms Clinton also noted that in engaging the emerging powers in global economic governance and here she mentioned China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia the US will benefit in the short and the long term if these countries are part of the solution (in reviving the slumped international economy). During his election campaign, eager to calm fears over rising job losses in the US economy, Mr Obama had indicated that if elected he might seek to reduce or eliminate outsourcing to countries like India in the IT sector. This had caused anxieties here. But since then, with further chiselling of positions as the incoming Obama administration was preparing to take charge, there have been signs of the tempering of the earlier protectionist rhetoric. Moreover, it is the automobile sector in America which the new president appears intent on rev-starting in a bid to build jobs.