In the previous term, UPA altered India?s strategic relationship with the US in a significant way.
Although the Roosevelt administration supported India?s freedom movement, subsequent regimes until the arrival of George W Bush had problems with India. Bush approached India with an unusual maverick perspective. He broke the logjam, converting good people-to-people relationships and a promising commercial relationship into a stable one in strategic terms. Manmohan Singh, ably assisted by Pranab Mukherjee (after the recalcitrant Natwar Singh was dropped) leveraged this opportunity brilliantly.
In this term, UPA should set itself an equally difficult and worthwhile agenda. China is the emerging superpower and is going to dominate the future either jointly with the US or on its own. Despite a burgeoning commercial relationship with China, we are far from being engaged and harmonious friends, let alone allies. In the next few years, you have an opportunity to dramatically alter Sino-Indian relations and give it a positive foundation pretty much along the same lines as we have with the US.
Many persons with considerable intellectual credentials will warn you about China. They will claim that China is our natural adversary and has devious designs to keep us weak. Others will tell you that any compromise we make on the seemingly intractable border dispute will be a betrayal of Mother India. They will tell you that we cannot and should not concede an inch of our sacred motherland. It is very important that you develop and sustain a fresh view that is not hindered by the burden of self-appointed experts.
The resolution of the border dispute with China can be relatively easy. A simple mechanism in which neither party concedes sovereignty over land but agrees to a perpetual lease will save face on both sides and result in a perfectly acceptable resolution. There will be variants to this suggestion that will be worth exploring. In all cases, preserving nationalist egos on both sides will be the critical element. In order to be able to sell such a compromise to Indian citizens, the process UPA chooses to employ will be more important than the content of the resolution. In this context, I have a suggestion.
Why not constitute a multi-party committee to finalise and endorse the outcome? LK Advani can be the chairman of this committee and the Congress can appeal to him that he will go down in history as the person who helped sort out an intractable problem. One reason Nehru was unable to resolve matters was that people were suspicious that under the influence of Krishna Menon he would sell out our crown jewels. If UPA follows a transparent multi-stakeholder process, it can avoid this problem.
Geopolitical experts will point out to you that China is an instigator of problems. China has transferred nuclear technology to Pakistan and has tried to bottle us up. While this may be true, the Chinese are rational folks. Pakistan is a failing or failed state depending on whether you choose to be polite or otherwise. China would much prefer a neutral, friendly India in its future confrontations with the US than an unstable unpredictable Pakistan. Till now, for various reasons, we have not allowed Chinese companies to invest in our infrastructure.
If Chinese institutions were to own 10% of Bangalore Metro, 20% of the Nava Sheva port or 30% of Indian Oil, their interest in India?s continuing stability and progress would get multiplied. This kind of gesture can be a ?major give? in our overall negotiations with them. It would constitute a real win-win move. In the context of the present global financial crisis, allowing a Chinese bank to open a hundred branches in India in order to access the growing Indian retail market would be preferable to giving this approval to thinly capitalised near-bankrupt US banks. We should seriously consider this and throw it on to the negotiating table?if nothing else?in order to demonstrate to them the incredible value that normalising their relations with us will provide them.
China is definitely a superpower?emerging or already arrived. We are still a poor country with a quarter of our population going to bed hungry each night. We need to approach them with humility. At the same time, we are not a failing state. We can be a useful friend and a promising partner. If UPA can succeed in convincing the Chinese leadership of this and in persuading Indians that Sino-Indian friendship is in fact the perfect balancing counter to good Indo-American relations, history will judge UPA not just kindly but in euphoric terms.
?The author divides his time between Mumbai, Lonavla and Bangalore