Regards, Ivan
Posted on 07/23/2005 11:45:19 PM PDT by MadIvan
WHEN John Walton, the heir to the Wal-Mart retail family's vast fortune, was killed in a plane crash three weeks ago, the story was reported in most of India's national newspapers, along with the details of his life.
New Delhi's often insular press does not usually dwell in much detail on anything other than the most important international news; but attention these days is intensely focused on the US business world, particularly conglomerates such as Wal-Mart.
The Indian media has pored over the US supermarket giant's efforts to break into the local retail sector, an untapped gold mine long closed to outsiders.
To support their case for expansion across the subcontinent, Wal-Mart and other American companies have been spreading the news that they are increasingly using India as a significant source of supplies. Wal-Mart is buying goods worth approaching $1.5bn from India this year.
The amount is small compared with what it currently spends in China, but it is a serious start and a clear message to Beijing. Behind Wal-Mart is a long queue of potential investors in India headed by Ford, American Express, General Electric and the ubiquitous Starbucks.
Last week the state visit of India's prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, to Washington DC began what political commentators here in New Delhi have described as unprecedented dialogue and co-operation between the world's largest economy and the biggest democracy. According to one US State Department source, relations between the two countries were now unequivocally bonded. "In the post-Cold War, post-September 11, 2001, world society, US and Indian interests generally converge. Both cherish democracy, commercial enterprise, the rule of law, secularism, non-aggression and religious pluralism," he said.
With the White House increasingly concerned that China might some day turn its rising economic and military power against US interests, its relationship with India is now widely seen on Capitol Hill as the key counterbalance in Asia.
The CIA analysis describes India today as the most important "swing state" in the world, a country that could tip the balance between war and peace, between chaos and order.
Last week, to coincide with the visit of Singh to the US, the publication of a Washington think tank report, highlighted this belief. In a timely study titled India as a New Global Power and prepared for the leading Pentagon-backed strategy group The Carnegie Endowment, Ashley Tellis, an Indian-born adviser to the White House, argued for the urgent upgrading of the US relationship with India and quoted an internal CIA assessment that claimed India, in the future, could be a major asset or hindrance for the US.
India, Tellis stressed in his report, will soon be one of the world's five largest economies and could serve as a potential hedge against an expansionist China and a crucial ally in the war against terror.
He added: "The CIA has compared the emergence of China to the rise of Germany in the 19th century and the US in the 20th century in terms of mapping the global future.
"There is a real fear that China might some day turn its rising economic and military power against America. In this context the US needs to look at a re-ordering of their relationship with India which today is not only a key ally in the war against terror but a counterbalance in Asia against China's dominance."
American political analysts remain abuzz over last week's rare White House state dinner for the visiting Indian Prime Minister, only the fifth such occasion in George Bush's presidency.
During the summit, Bush promised Singh substantial US help for India's civilian nuclear power programme in return for a commitment to adhere to non-proliferation pacts.
Only a few years ago, America saw the burgeoning Indian call centres and hi-tech campuses as a threat to US jobs; now most major US corporations rely on the backroom expertise of Indian specialists to hold down costs and remain competitive.
For America the contrast with China could not be more marked. India, despite its ramshackle infrastructure, is now attracting Western investors who have been burnt by sharp practice, the notoriously opaque legal framework in China.
India's political system is more multi-layered, its society more open and economy more transparent. Little wonder, therefore, that Washington sees India as a counterweight to China, yet the US is only too wary of India's own relationship with Beijing. In April this year the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, made his first visit to New Delhi with virtually the same message of alliance communicated by the US last week.
In talks aimed at resolving 43-year-old boundary disputes in Northern India and to set the stage for growing co-operation on trade and security issues, the meeting was described in the Indian press as a success.
Neither the US nor China can afford to ignore a growing regional player such as India, or to have it working directly against them.
Beijing in particular has reason to be wary of Delhi as the US courts India to be a counterweight to a rising China. But crucially many officials and scholars in New Delhi say the future of Indo-Chinese relations may be less competitive and aimed more at allowing each other to grow large enough to make the world multilateral once more.
"There is no question that the US follows a doctrine of unilateralism" and that is an area of joint concern for India and China, according to Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea, former director of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi. "The bottom line is that we are the neighbours here. We share a border. I would like to see America take a wiser approach to these relations, and see the co-operation of India and China, which includes elements of competition, as a positive thing."
As Lord Palmerston, the Victorian British statesman and exponent of gunboat diplomacy, once said: "We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and these interests it is our duty to follow."
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Better to trade with a God-fearing nation than a communist one.
The East River's got nuthin' on the Ganges for nasty.
Absolutely! This article uses the word democracy for India but omits Communist when speaking of China. Odd, I think, or more likely---look all socialists are not totalitarians but rather they act as apologists for totalitarians. The Scots lean heavily socialist and so this omission.
have any of you ever been to india...it is no model for anything....democracy...no...two class system...yes...they beat us on jobs only because they treat their workers like slaves...which they do to the thais in their plants in thailand...and the cost of doing business there is zero since their streets are open sewers and 90% of their people live on the street in cardboard boxes eating with the cows in the trash dumpsters...please everyone get off the india india india hype...oh and don't turn your backs on anyone there either...
true...but if you saw it with all the hype that doesn't even mention it...oh well...thanks for reply
You-will-love-this®/™ Ping!
Yep.We Indians live in cardboard boxes , with cows for company and a 24-hour 256 kbps internet connection for entertainment ;) And as you said ..we treat our workers...especially the software engineers , many of who have more degrees and higher IQ than your entire family tree combined ..as slaves.
When did you give up the tepees? < /American ignorance >
I don't suppose we'll chat often, I'm not usually up at this hour. Welcome aboard!
Why do we have to curry favor with those who favor curry?
Mmmm! Anyone for some hot curry?
thanks for the typical arrogant india reply...oh oh your IQ and my poor family tree...you guys know everything...and so much smarter than anyone else...don't be so defensive..i was just offering a personal first hand observations of what i saw and experienced throughout india for months when i worked there of the terrible situation your government allows to exist...and some of the reasons we Americans are so stupid to send jobs there and partner with such caring societies. it is no wonder it is so much cheaper for companies to short cut and do business in that way - that is the crime. btw, you sound like one the 10% who really care about the other 90%...but not surprising...expected!
This is called reality. The difficult part in this is to choose wisely.
Many Americans are ignorant.
The conditions in India are extreme but things are changing.
Many Americans, while paying lip service to democracy, prefer to deal with businesses utilising slave labor, a fascist corporate structure held together by a totalitarian party, ostensibly "communist" but keeping the people under control. That way, labor unrest, civil issues, religious freedoms, freedom of speech and association are controlled by the ChiComs, and many Americans prefer that control. In fact, they wish they had it here. So, best thing is, ignore ignorant yahoos. may their offspring end up distributing bibles in China LOL! or that other bastion of human rights, Saudi!
China fits the bill.
ping
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