(The article was first published in Vijay Times, 28 January 2007).
At last week’s CII Partnership Summit in Bangalore, one could see the difference between the political leadership of this country and that of some other nations, including tiny Singapore. In one session, the purpose of which was to ask whether the 21st century would be Asias century, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath exposed the confusion within the Indian political leadership on the big strategic issues of our time. He waxed eloquent on how a new world had emerged in which nothing mattered except economic growth. In Naths view, the world has moved beyond great power conflicts and all the major powers would, in future, be too busy chasing the moolah to think of other things. The bottomline was: India was not looking to play a leadership role in international power politics.
The foreign minister of Singapore, that tiny island which resembles Britain in its great fortune of having had leaders with a breadth of vision and understanding of world strategic trends, however, showed more sense than Nath. He said the idea of political and business leaders sitting in a five-star hotel discussing affair as if only GDP growth mattered and as if the world had gone beyond ideology, identity, nationalism and great power ambitions was ridiculous. In contrast to the oft-repeated Indian position that there is room enough for both China and India to grow into economic superpowers and that they would cooperate in doing so based on their Asianness, George Yeo pointed out that there was more that divided India and China than what could bring them together. He pointed out that the two rising giants would be competing for the same limited resources and influence in the same regions of the world.
Almost as if to prove Yeo right and Nath wrong, Bangalore - of all the places -- itself exploded into a communal orgy over the weekend. Elsewhere, by shooting down one of its own satellites to demonstrate its space weapons capability, China gave notice to the world of its growing ambition to be a world superpower in every sense and not just in narrow economic terms. Nations and peoples do not live by economics alone.
Among a mixed audience of business leaders and children of a consumerist, globalised India, Nath did seem to come out as more keyed in and more intellectually trendy. But what the Indian leadership might have lost in the din of its own cocksure rhetoric is th number of invites it got from around the world to start playing a fuller role on the world stage than just be its back-office. From the President of Portugal and Prime Minister of Canada to top officials of international banks, everyone called on India to spread its wings. But the most important invite came from Britain. Gordon Brown, prime minister-inwaiting did invite India into his “new world order”, but even firmer invitations have come from Conservative leader David Cameroon as well as the British media. The Times , London, called India our other cousins, the original one being America.
The British invitation is important, because Britains strategic antennae are the most sensitive in the world and British strategic culture is built around the no permanent friends, only permanent interests dictum. British leaders are, therefore, able to scent now the potential superpowers of the future and distinguish between its friend and foe.
Britain did something similar in the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th when it chose to appease and align itself with America, rather than with Germany.
Similar attitudes were discernible towards the two rising powers of the contemporary world, if only Indian political and business leaders cared to understand. The head of one European bank, for instance, invited Indian investments into Ukraine, Russia, Central Asia, even Mongolia.
Over tea, this author asked the banker if he would extend a similar invitation to China. The man said he wouldnt. His banks mandate was to promote market economies. India is a democracy, Indian companies are mostly private sector companies. The big Chinese companies are all state-run companies. When they go to invest, they go from a non-market economy and they carry the baggage of the Chinese states strategic objectives, the man said.
Coming from a Central European official, whose organisation is itself driven by the European Unions strategic objectives, this was a major change from what the European Union had been trying to do all these years. The Franco-German axis leading the EU had attempted to help China grow it into a superpower pole that would balance the United States.
This was much against the advice of strategic thinkers like the late Gerald Segal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies who had suggested as early as 1999 that the EU should move away from China and develop a strategic partnership with India, instead, considering its more western, more status quoist orientation. But perhaps, in 1999, the EU and the Bill Clinton-led America - both much in awe of China - had not considered India available yet to play a role on the world stage, although the Indian government of the day had indicated readiness.
At the CII Partnership Summit, it was a curious reversal - following the Americans, even the Europeans were beginning to perceive that India was now available to play a leading world role. Everybody, it seemed, loved India, but it was India shying away with a strange sense of modesty.
