Top Billing Once Again

The Clinton stardust is still speckling the subcontinental atmosphere as the rest of the international community makes a beeline to engage with what it until very recently regarded as an errant nation-India. Gone are those shrill attempts to isolate India for the nuclear tests. Gone (at least into the far background) are the demands for India to sign the CTBT, or else. Gone too are the accusations that India has turned Kashmir into a nuclear flashpoint.

Instead, we see reason and pragmatism and an almost total acceptance of the new nuclear reality. The billing and cooing is near-cacaphonic as Delhi-based diplomats say things like, "The nuclear issue is only one aspect of the relationship," and, "There are not enough high-level visitors from our country to New Delhi," and, "The status quo in Kashmir must be maintained-Pakistan must not be allowed to derail it."

Foreign dignitaries are racing past each other to get to the newly-sanctified portals of South Block. Australia’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, almost stepped on Clinton’s toes, in such a hurry was he to walk in his shadow, when he timed his visit to coincide with the US President’s to India. Jaswant Singh used the opportunity to get a promise of resuming defence ties with Australia. A defence delegation is expected from Canberra to discuss the process.

British foreign secretary Robin Cook, known for his radical hard-left Labour views, was found to be echoing Clinton when he said "the modern world does not permit boundaries (between India and Pakistan) to be redrawn in blood". That was viewed as the most significant statement he made during the recent India visit-an articulation that the status quo over the LoC should be maintained. This is something India has been saying for some time but it needed a US presidential visit to give it a modicum of legitimacy.

The Germans for their part suddenly feel the need to "relaunch a high-level visitors diplomacy", by first sending their foreign minister to India in about four weeks’ time. Even the Canadians are coming around. Russia’s newly-elected president, Vladimir Putin, is planning a trip to India later in the year. For all this and more, the mandarins of South Block must take a bow. And so, perhaps, must Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

"It’s interesting that now the Anglo-Saxons are finally on our side," says foreign affairs analyst C. Raja Mohan. This of course excludes France, which has always tried to pursue a semi-independent foreign policy. But, as one German diplomat notes, the fact that the French have categorically come out in support of India’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council is new. "India is destined to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. France supports and will support your candidature," French President Jacques Chirac announced recently at a banquet in honour of the Indian president in Paris. There is a view that none of this would have happened if Clinton had not come to town.

But diplomats in Delhi are in a hurry to disassociate the recent changes from the Clinton visit. Saying German ambassador Heinrich Dieckman’s statement in Calcutta that he understood India’s position on the UN Security Council got overblown in the local newspapers as a new mood towards India, a German diplomat adds, "The media tries to give very simple headlines. While we do understand the Indian position, we do not go so far as to support India because that would mean excluding other countries. In fact, there is really no substantial change in our stand." Another diplomat was unwilling to view Cook’s remarks on India and the Security Council as an endorsement of India’s views. "I think Cook was really reluctant to talk about the Security Council issue-he has always been hesitant about the subject." Concurs former foreign secretary Muchkund Dubey, "It’s very easy to sound supportive of India when the method of expanding the Security Council has not been dealt with. They know they are not going to be put to the test and then who is going to remember what promises were made in the past?"

Diplomats say it is India’s burgeoning IT sector and growing economy that’s attracting the interest and not the Clinton visit. Another former foreign secretary, J.N. Dixit, is also wary of putting all the recent diplomatic positives down to the Clinton effect. "After nine months of criticism for the nuclear tests, we opened lines of communication with everybody and while the Clinton visit has given it a push, the truth is that this is a culmination of months of effort. Even a country like Japan, which remains formally critical of India’s testing, is improving trade ties with India." In recent months, India has reportedly received former prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto from Japan, while both defence minister George Fernandes and commerce minister Murasoli Maran have visited Tokyo.

Dubey also believes that India should not gloat about the recent diplomatic coups. "I do think these overtures have to a very great extent been occasioned by the Clinton visit," he says. "However, we should not go overboard in our elation about it. It is a sobering change and the onus is on us to maintain our dynamism in the economic sector, governance and the social sector-these must be given attention," he adds.

Raja Mohan looks at it from another angle. "We are so used to having arguments and fights with everybody. We can’t get used to the fact that we are being agreed with. And we have to get over our knee-jerk reactions to the West if we want this thing to work. We must learn to get along with people."

But it’s not just the Anglo-Saxons who have changed their tune. Even the East is looking at India favourably. Japan is eager to separate bilateral relationship from the nuclear issue and Fernandes is talking about joint exercises with both Vietnam and Japan. Secular Turkey has turned away from Pakistan and Iran’s Shias are wary of their neighbours, the Taliban. The Saudis, though conservative, are far removed from the sort of radical Islam posed by Osama bin Laden and his followers. All this makes India look almost pristine.

But South Block has a lot of work to do. Says Stanford University-based analyst Sumit Ganguly, "India’s policy-makers are superb crisis managers. However, they seem to suffer from a congenital inability to plan, organise and implement policies for the longer term. In the wake of the Clinton visit, India has an important window of opportunity. India’s decision-makers must assiduously work to ensure that the country can jump through this window, and in time." Or be shut out again.