Obama's bold Indo-US equation: Give and take, not giver and taker

On the day Obama arrives in New Delhi, the question you are most likely to hear is, can/will this presidential visit also be a game-changer like the last two (Clinton and Bush)? You will also mostly get scepticism and doubt by way of answers. That he is bringing not a big idea but mere platitudes. That he is too weak to deliver a cartful of goodies to his country's latest "strategic ally". That he is coming not so much as the most powerful leader in the world, but mostly as a seeker of jobs for his recession-hit people.

All three are probably right. But is it all good, or bad for India?

Could it be that this visit won't be a game-changer because there is no need to materially alter the relationship as it has been re-set in the past 15 years? This visit, then, would be further evidence that the game of our bilateral relationship has already changed. Therefore, it is about cementing and celebrating that remarkable shift rather than search for unnecessary new paradigms.

Clinton convinced us after 37 years (since Kennedy, 1963) that Americans could be our friends. By declaring that the map of the subcontinent can no longer be redrawn in blood he also sanctified the LoC as a nearly de-facto border. Bush followed by seeking India as a strategic partner in the war against terror and backing his commitment by delivering to India an unprecedented single-country exemption from such a water-tight regime of multilateral treaty restrictions. These moves were game-changers. These were made between two different sets of governments in the 1998-2008 decade, thereby also acquiring a genuinely bipartisan seal of approval in both democracies. Our engagement with the US from thereon, should be, and is about consummating the gains from this. That is what this Obama visit should, and hopefully will, be about.

... contd.

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