Title: The irrelevance
of Clinton's visit
Author: Swaminathan
S Anklesaria Aiyar
Publication: The Economic
Times
Date: March 22, 2000
Rarely in history have
so many written so much about so little. The visit of President Bill Clinton
to South Asia is a minor event which will soon be forgotten. So why are
the media carpet-bombing the public with reports on every aspect of the
Clinton visit from the decor in his hotel room to his strategy for seeing
tigers at Ranthambore sanctuary? Because news today has become a
form of entertainment rather than political significance. Visits by singer
Michael Jackson and call-girl Pamela Bordes now inspire detailed coverage.
The fact is that Jackson can draw bigger paying crowds than Clinton any
time.
Several political pundits
are wasting their time warning against India caving in to American diktat.
What paranoia! Clinton has already visited over 100 countries before coming
here. That sums up the low priority he gives to India. It also sums up
the low priority we should give to US Presidential visits.
Do not misunderstand
me. I believe that improved Indo-US relations are very important. But I
do not believe that relations between the two governments are very important.
What matters is relations between individual Indians and Americans. No
US President has visited India for 22 years. During that absence, person-to-person
contacts between India and the US have soared, to the point where Indians
now occupy an amazingly strong and influential position in the US.
This has happened despite
constant quarrels between politicians on both sides. Indeed, Indians have
become more influential than ever in the US precisely when the US government
has imposed economic sanctions on India. Millions of US citizens will scramble
to buy shares of Wipro if Azim Premji offers them, whereas politicians
like Jaswant Singh or Strobe Talbott cannot attract an American audience
of even a thousand without official assistance.
The US now has 1.5 million
people of Indian origin, constituting the richest segment of American society.
Silicon Valley alone has a reported one lakh Indian millionaires. Over
200 CEOs of Indian origin have created a new business forum in Washington
DC. Rono Dutta now heads United Airlines, the biggest airline in
the world, and Rakesh Gangwal heads US Air.
Rajat Gupta heads McKinsey,
the top management consultancy firm in the world. Victor Menezes is close
to the top of Citicorp. Two Indians have just merged to form a $9 billion
software company, the biggest ever software merger in the US. Indeed, Wall
Street has an orgasm every time an Indian software company wants to list
its shares in the US.
Let me tell you a story
doing the rounds. An American called John Smith approaches a venture capitalist
in Silicon Valley with a proposal for a new dot.com company. The venture
capitalist says, ``Your idea is very good. But why don't you first get
a partner with a name like Murthy? Then we will happily finance your venture.''
Indians are now seen as a recipe for high-tech success.
This has happened despite
constant friction between Indian and US governments for decades. Even as
Nixon and Indira Gandhi muttered expletives about one another, thousands
of Indians were moving to the USA for higher studies and jobs. That was
the start of their climb up the technology ladder which has now culminated
in Indian dominance in Silicon Valley.
This happened despite,
not because of government help. The US government created several barriers
to migration. The Indian government moaned about the brain drain and condemned
the Indians in question as unpatriotic. Yet that flow of Indians was followed
by a reverse flow once India adopted a more open economy.
This has now made India
a global superpower in software. Infosys and Wipro command a market capitalisation
of almost $40 billion each, ten times as much as US multinationals like
Goodyear or Raytheon. Even Germany, long opposed to immigration from Asia,
now wants to attract Indian brains in order to improve its competitiveness.
Various technology agreements
are expected to be signed by the two governments during the Clinton visit.
This is a lame attempt of the two governments to pretend that they have
something to do with the technological revolution we are witnessing. In
fact the two governments have constantly had disagreements on technology
flows, with India complaining of insufficient access to US technology and
the US drawing up a long list of entities to be denied technology. Political
pundits have made much of the denial of American computers to help predict
the weather. This shows how completely out of touch political pundits are
with the real world. The flow of individuals between India and the US has
made India a hightech superpower. By contrast, Americans remain sceptical
of their Met Office's ability to forecast the weather, no matter how high-powered
their computers may be.
The Indian government
has constantly complained that the US government does not give enough visas
for Indian computer specialists to travel to the US for on-site work. But
the truth is that this very lack of visas has obliged firms to do more
software work in India rather than the US. This upgradation of Indian skills
and rise of Indian software giants has suddenly rung alarm bells in Silicon
Valley, and companies there are now leaning on the US government to expand
the number of visas so that more Indians can come over. This is a case
of citizens leading the way and governments following.
Okay, some people will
say, but surely topics like nuclear proliferation and Kashmir are important?
Yes, they have some importance, yet neither remotely approaches the capacity
of high technology to transform the lives of Indians. If the two governments
make no progress whatsoever on these two issues, it will hardly change
the lives of Indians.
So, let us treat the
Clinton visit mainly as an opportunity for promoting Indian tourism. No
doubt it also has some symbolic political significance. But if the media
hype attracts another lakh American tourists to see the Taj Mahal and Ranthambore,
that will be a more concrete outcome than the paper agreements that Clinton
and Vajpayee may sign.
