Sanjaya Baru | Modi's Mission America: The dragon in the room

Two high-level interactions last week between the United States and two major Asian nations will be remembered for some time as marking a new low in America’s global standing. First, the visit of US secretary of state Antony Blinken to Beijing and, in particular, his submissive manner in the imperious presence of China’s President Xi Jinping. Second, the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington DC and, in particular, the exuberant reception he received, both in the White House and at the

US Congress, despite questions about where India’s plural, liberal and secular democracy and its institutions are now headed.

Mr Blinken bowed before Xi and in a subsequent long interaction with the media declared that (a) the United States was not engaged in the geo-economic containment of China; (b) the US sticks firmly to its “One China” policy and does not support Taiwan’s independence; (c) that US business leaders he met in Beijing want to “grow their business” in China and that his government would support them; and (e) that the US seeks greater people-to-people interactions, encouraging resumption of travel of tourists and students.

That this happened on the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States may have its own angle, though few have so far linked the two. Perhaps to disabuse Indians of any such thoughts, President Joe Biden balanced out Mr Blinken’s gestures by calling President Xi a “dictator”. That may have satisfied some Indians who are now desperately trying to ignore the thaw in US-China relations, but then they could not ignore former US President Barack Obama calling out the Modi government for its treatment of the minorities and their attitude to democratic freedoms at home.

Whatever reservations American political leaders may have about Mr Modi’s Hindutva, their fear of a rising China and the Eurasian alliance of China and Russia have prompted them to reach out to India. In 1998 President Bill Clinton had no hesitation sharing with his Chinese counterparts a confidential communication from Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee that named China as the nuclear adversary that prompted India’s decision to come out of the nuclear closet. This pleased Beijing and embarrassed New Delhi.

During President Barack Obama’s first term in office a senior state department official told me, expecting I would convey this to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, that India should “get real about China”. He meant come to terms with China’s progress and power, and the consequent gap between the two Asian neighbours, and not pretend to be in the same league. When President Biden met Prime Minister Modi in the White House’s Oval Office, the dragon loomed so large that the US was ready to open its treasure chests to India.

The “deliverables”, as they are called, from the Modi visit are significant and of value to India. At what price and on what terms these deliverables will be delivered remains to be seen.

Equally relevant would be how resourceful Indian engineers and technologists would be in accessing these technologies, in “learning by doing”, and ultimately making India more self-reliant and less dependent on the US or any other country for that matter. Can US-India “co-production” eventually help make India truly “atma nirbhar”? That would be the Indian objective, as indeed it was China’s when the United States and China were allies. Would the US make the “mistake” with India that it made with China, namely, make the technologically dependent eventually independent?

That would, however, depend on the quality of investment India would make in becoming a more self-reliant technological power. Prime Minister Modi very grandly declared that AI stands for “America and India” cooperation in the field of “artificial intelligence”. It is not clear whether such cooperation would in fact empower India by contributing to its “atma nirbharata” or would merely increase the flow of bright young Indians to research institutions in the United States.

One of the odd things about the Indian demand on the US government for increased visas is that it in fact facilitates the “brain drain” out of India with little reverse flow from the US to India. The thousands who cheer Prime Minister Modi every time he goes to the US are quite happy to remain in the US, contributing to America’s “atma nirbharta” in dealing with a rising China. Their patriotism ends with chanting mantras and slogans.

Important as the new agreements are, one must recognise that there is a fundamental difference between the “historic” significance of what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was able to achieve in 2006 and what Mr Modi has done through this visit to the US. Sealing a defence and technology deal where the US plugs gaps in India that a half century of domestic effort has not been able to, as in the development of the jet engine, is so obviously different from getting the US to come to terms with India’s indigenous effort in emerging as a nuclear power.

The deliverables from Mr Modi’s visit to Washington DC, that commit the US to helping India become a more robust technological and defence power, are what the US can do for India in facilitating India’s rise as a geo-economic power. India becoming a nuclear weapons power, and indeed space power, was about what India could do on its own to emerge as a global geopolitical entity. The global community came to respect India for the latter. It will view the former with sympathy, knowing well that India remains wary of the dragon in its neighbourhood.

If in the coming decade the Indian political, administrative, business and intellectual leadership make good use of the opportunity presented by Western concern with the rise of China, in the manner in which the Chinese leadership used Western concern about the power and influence of the former Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, then this could be a decade of opportunity for India. On the other hand, if we persist with policies that accentuate inequities and inequalities, divide society along ethnic, caste, communal and linguistic lines, and encourage Indian talent and enterprise to migrate to the West, even the best of bilateral relationships can do little for India’s development.