Kerry’s damp squib

Vishal Sharma
US secretary of state, John Kerry has come and gone. And that too without making any substantive headline. It is rare that a US secretary of state comes visiting on a mission that involves something as significant as paving way for the PM Narendra Modi’s maiden visit to the US in September and is not seen as warming the cockles of the hearts of the establishment by way of host of agreements on issues of bilateral importance to set the tone. In fact, such preparatory visits are usually meant to transcend the most immediately possible transactional paradigm to become more substantive. This is done to ensure that the much anticipated sequel lives up to its billing and, thus, does not get reduced to photo ops only. In that sense, it appears that not everything about this visit bore a catchet of normal. And, if evidence on offer is anything to go by, both Washington and Delhi failed in this probing exercise.
John Kerry’s visit has been overshadowed by the snooping row in India. Delhi’s approach on the snooping row though has been inexplicable to say the least. In the parliament, it has been in denial mode even though some probing questions have been raised given the kind of investigative reportage in the media and the government’s bumbling defence in the matter. On the other hand, during her interactions with Secretary Kerry, Indian foreign minister was seeking answers from him on the alleged US espionage on the Indian leaders. This paradox is baffling. It is not understandable why the government would put the US in an embarrassing position on the espionage issue when it itself revealed in the House that there has been no spying on Indian leaders. On another extreme, it also does not add up that if there was indeed US snooping, why the government would studiedly hide it from the House and then inexplicably raise the issue later with Secretary Kerry in full public view and destroy the visit completely?
Or is it that the import of the statement made in the House was that it’s the US, and not the government that had spied on its minister? If it were indeed so, it should have been explicitly made clear in the House and a debate held in the matter in light of the allegations made by the perennial whistleblower Subrahmaniam Swamy. This ambivalence should not have been allowed to seep into the foreign policy domain so as to impact Kerry’s visit in the manner it has.
The other issue that has not been handled well is the trade facilitation agreement (TFA) currently under ratification under WTO. India is holding out on it as it compromises its food security by way of limiting its food stockpiling capacities and the farm subsidy regime. Delhi is saying that given the supply side uncertainities accentuated by unreliable monsoons, it can’t commit on doing what TFA mandates. It has, as a quid pro quo, asked for the creation of an enabling parallel law which caters to its needs.
US and India finding a common ground on the issue was always going to be difficult as India also needs this facility to help it to meet the demands imposed by the RtFS (right to food security), an enactment based entitlement. But, if persistently cajoled, and also, if some trade off was put on the table in the shape of a middle of the road policy trade instrument, Delhi would have been likely tempted to endorse the TFA. And US, if it so wanted, could pull off this coup, as it has done on many such occasions of logjam in the past.  However, it appears both Kerry and his opposite numbers held talks on the issue holed up from their highly fortified trenches. Kerry’s talks later with PM Narendra Modi also went nowhere. Meanwhile, reports from WTO suggest that members have already made up their minds to go ahead with the agreement independent of Delhi. It is not in Delhi being left out of the bargain, for that may be in its interests, but in the progressively diminishing leverage of the US-India equation that there are reasons to be concerned about where this relationship has been heading all this while. In another times, the abiding strength of the US-India relation would have found a way out.
Kerry has also highlighted concerns underlying the delay in the passage of the nuke liability bill. The US is not happy with the Delhi’s stand on the issue. Under pressure from its industrial houses, it has been pushing for its passage in its present form in the Indian parliament. But the bill in its present form does not offer a reasonable deal by way of an adequate compensation to the victims. Nor does it peg the liability of the culpable corporate at a level which is deemed satisfactory in India. Any uptick in the compensation framework is just not acceptable to the corporates. As a nuke plant accident is an unqualified disaster, the consequential limited liability of the accused corporation as contained in the bill has become a moral dilemma for the legislators in a country, which has gone through a chemical disaster in 80s. And they still do not know what to do with it. But the more they delay it having come thus far on the issue, the more it will exacerbate the US’s discomfort with Delhi.
Given that in the face of near non issues or small issues, the US-India’s first interface has faltered, it is difficult to see how it will get going in September when Modi and Obama hold hands and stand outside the white house for a photo op. The issues that will most certainly get talked about during Modi-Obama meet are going to be India’s role in Afghanistan post US withdrawl, US’s stance on terrorism in India’s backyard, defence trade talks, middle east post ISIS, WTO issues (if they are not sorted out by then), India’s expansive look east policy, particularly in view of Japan’s (under Shizo Abe) warming up to India recently and upping the volume of bilateral trade from under Rs 100 billion to the levels close to that of US-China, that is, Rs 500 billion . All of these issues are prickly and don’t lend itself to easy resolution, especially as US and India’s views on them don’t proximate. It will, therefore, be important for the Indian establishment to lay down the clear achievables and deliverables on these issues. US-India interface can’t forever remain hostage to the stultifying bureaucracies of the two countries; our domestic polity’s world view on US and vice versa; and most importantly, to the long irrelevant Nehruvian consensus and Nixonian and Kissingerian perspectives. It is about time it found its own station.

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