Column : Obama-II augurs well for India

President Obama’s re-election was expected. We should remember that prior to the first Presidential debate, he had built a clear 10-point lead over Romney. This has now been reaffirmed by the clear victory that he has achieved.

The tightness of the race during the last few weeks was, in my view, more a media creation and did not reflect the ground realities. At least the final tally, with Obama winning 303 of the 509 electoral college votes counted till the time this column went to print, and likely the popular vote as well, would tend to support this. I think people all over the world are heaving a sigh of relief because, given the many changes in his stance on a wide range of issues, Romney would have been an unknown and I dare say an unpredictable entity to deal with. Whether we agree with him or not, at least President Obama has the virtue of consistency in both his domestic and foreign policies. We can now be sure that the US will withdraw from Afghanistan, it will continue to press Pakistan to take a tougher stand against Islamic terrorists and not foment Taliban trouble across the Durand line. Let us hope that under his renewed mandate, the US will put sufficient pressure on the ISI for them to realise that trying to calibrate the behaviour of the Taliban and expecting its influence to remain

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