Summing Up With Uncle Sam

By Anahat Danewalia

Like most other Indian issues, the term stability doesn’t really figure high in the India’s Foreign Relations story. Try what we may, Pakistan continues to be a big headache, China remains stubborn as ever and U.S. continues its domineering attitude, amidst others. Held together by various intriguing facets and diplomatic tales, India continues its attempts towards charming the world. Talking about Uncle Sam, as of now, the diplomacy between India and U.S.A. is bordering on utter confusion since there are turfs where the two nations are almost at loggerheads even while they benefit collaborating on others. Ahead of the Prime Minister’s visit and First Lady Michelle Obama’s exclusive tea session, there are factors that both sides must look into to avoid future tiffs. On the agenda are various things like the civilian nuclear deal, the US Immigration bill and more measures to improve trade relations between the two countries.

The primary cornerstone of world integration is trade, and amidst the slowdown, trade still exists, uplifting spirits and ensuring that the phase of recovery is sustained. The United States is India’s second largest trading partner and may soon replace China as the biggest. However, the spirit of cooperation instituted by the annual US-India Strategic Dialogue initiated in 2009 is now under stress,  primarily because of the decisions being taken by the US Administration with regularity, often in conjunction with commercial interests, which threaten India’s development priorities to a certain degree. These priorities include key areas like security, education, services, health and agriculture; both sides saying that they want to take bilateral trade from USD 100 billion to more than USD 500 billion.

Let us look at some key issues: For a considerable period of time, India has been taking a series of steps to implement the patent laws supporting availability of medicines at affordable prices. Also, the Indian Patents Act is now consistent with the provisions of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the WTO. The Supreme Court recently rejected some major foreign pharmaceutical companies for their patent claims, while the US Trade Representative observed the rejections as a “troubling precedent”. Such observations were in keeping with the demand of the dominant pharmaceutical firms- that the US Administration must press the Government of India to step back from the policies it had adopted vis-à-vis pharmaceutical patents. This is just one contentious bone gnawing at bilateral trade ties.

On the front of WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), the lobby of developing nations led by India has been persistent in arguing that the subsidies granted by the advanced countries have skewed global markets and hurt the interests of developing and least developed countries involved. India has been a supporter of the view that the advanced countries must ultimately do away with their farm subsidies while the developing countries should be made available the option of using policy instruments for ensuring food security and rural livelihoods. Without surprise, the US has been the most vocal opponent to the proposed changes. This aim comes at a time when the Food Security Bill is being seen by the UPA as a key propellant in its campaigning process. In the meantime, US farm support has gone up; even while the league of developing countries (including India) continues struggling to get the developed countries agree to the adoption of instruments that are of vital importance to them.
India wants more infrastructural investment from the US; however the US wants to see these reforms enacted before going any further. Americans in industrial and commercial circles complain about India’s infrastructure and investment environment. US immigration laws are also hurting the Indian economy’s belly. H1B visas shall hit the IT firms critically enough to cause them to reconsider their business plans altogether and are challenging India’s dream-run of becoming the world’s back-end office. Thus, the economies of the two trading partners are engaged but are still not engaging enough because of the ideological differences that pull them in different directions.

The Strategic dialogue seems set to have the Nuclear Liability Law as the top priority. In 2010, Parliament passed the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act. In a break from international norm, the law says that not only the reactor operator but also component suppliers would face unlimited legal liability in case of an accident. US reactors, sold by private firms, would become too expensive with this kind of liability. The global norm is for the reactor operator to be liable to compensate victims in case of an accident. If a component supplier is at fault, the operator can sue the supplier.
In India, however, the reactor operator is the state-owned NPCIL, so all liability in case of an accident would devolve to the Indian government. In theory, NPCIL could afterwards sue a foreign or domestic component supplier if they are at fault. The nuclear deal still remains a hurdle, with India going against the currents of international norms, especially the Westinghouse Pact.

Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to India in July 2012 moved New Delhi closer towards an alliance with the United States. Although the US and India seem desirous of containing China, their strategic goals and policy paths are quite different. 
On the strategic front, India was officially invited to the China containment “chain”. Yet, while India has been open to increasing bilateral engagement with Washington and does in fact undertake a number of joint exercises across the three defense services – the establishment in India is still wary of any military alliance with the United States.

It’s partly because India doesn’t want to upset China, its main competitor in Asia, by openly embracing the United States. Fundamentally speaking, Indian lawmakers and politicians continue to have reservations over the United States itself, stemming largely from India’s view that Washington has tendencies to side with India’s arch rival- Pakistan, on a periodic basis.
New Delhi also worries that small countries, incited by the US, may confront China openly, worsening regional conflicts while damaging regional stability.

Most importantly however, India is afraid of being reduced to a strategic vassal of the US, which will block its path to becoming a great power in the world. As a result, even though India has agreed to scale up operations for training Afghanistan’s armed forces with the United States, it has refused to back the US position on South China Sea and the India Ocean.

With all aspects considered along with the underlying contradictions, the two democracies seem far away from reaching a common ground of understanding even while they make concerted efforts in the same direction. Even though the two nations might agree to the theme of every letter they ink, their approaches to the theme possess undercurrents of contradiction.