From Rao to Modi, and Bush Sr to Trump, five Indian PMs and US presidents took 30 years to turn Cold War suspicion into trust. But this insensitive Biden-Harris letdown in a grave health crisis undermines that. Indian people’s chronic anti-Americanism was healing. That sore has been rudely scratched open.
India now needs a 9/11-type commission to fix accountability for the Covid mess in second wave
Once this pandemic ends, hopefully sooner than later, India will need an honest, 9/11-type commission to establish how we got here, fix individual accountability and systemic gaps so we don’t let ourselves down again. We came up short with post-Partition India’s greatest internal challenge. We can’t fail like this twice.
On a lighter note, the White House has responded to the Edit in a matter of hours.
There are hopeful signs that this issue will soon be resolved amicably. The rest of the world urgently needs Indian vaccines as well. President Biden, as a fifty year veteran of Washington, is too seasoned to bear a grudge for India having swung out on a limb for Trump’s reelection. 2. The more concerning, longer term issue is the reevaluation India must be undergoing in America’s official assessments. On both hard and soft power. The USCIRF report joins a growing pile of global indices which show Indian democracy adrift. An issue America is addressing once again, in its larger geopolitical rivalry with China. Also Russia, no longer seen as a genuine democracy. 3. That front page photograph in the NYT stirs subliminal memories of what we all felt India had left behind decades ago. Not living up to what Bush – Rice expected India to be in the architecture of Asia over the course of this century. Neither Quad nor anyone else is offering India a free ride on the tourist bus. Watched a stern faced Ms Jyoti Malhotra’s clip which was about a lot more than India not keeping its word to supply vaccines to Bangladesh for which it had paid in advance. 4. The United States is India’s most consequential bilateral relationship, a friendship that can endure much more than change of administrations in both countries. We have sought membership of an exclusive club with certain expectations of what we will ( increasingly ) bring to the table. Those promises will have to be redeemed in full measure.
American hypocrisy is stunning. So much for “America is back”.
With this one action, Biden-Harris are doing more damage than Trump did in his entire tenure.
Don’t forget Merkel’s statement that “we allowed India to become a pharma giant”.
Strategic autonomy may not be such a bad thing after all.
There are several important issues on which India and the United States will have to agree to disagree. However, not permitting vital raw materials to be exported to India, which will be used to manufacture doses for its immense domestic vaccination programme and exports, where many countries rely upon it, is small hearted. The US is comfortably placed for its citizens. This is just the sort of issue where a leader takes what is sometimes called a political decision, seeing the big picture, overruling the institutional advice of the bureaucracy. We think the world of the United States.
There has not been a serious act of terror on US soil after 9 / 11. The Department of Homeland Security was created out of the fact finding exercise that followed. 2,977 lives were lost on 11th September. The latest daily Covid death figure for India – an undercount – is 2,767. 2. One does not know if an honest investigation has gone into the Pulwama attack which almost brought the two countries to war. Whether there will be an equally rigorous examination into the Chinese intrusions in Ladakh last year. Inevitably, such an exercise would pinpoint failures, assign responsibility, fix accountability. 3. The Editor has recounted how his testimony on Kargil was gently edited by the great man himself. No incumbent would like a light to be shone on its failures. Few would regard India’s response to the coronavirus to be a startling success. What can and should be done is for young journalists to go into the field and bring us text and images of what is happening. They should have been the first to be vaccinated. 4. More than a 9 / 11 sort of Commission, what is likely is impediments / obstructions being placed in the way of honest reporting. Critical – one can hardly expect rose petals to be showered at such a time – tweets being taken down. Spare a thought for Shri Siddique Kappan, handcuffed to his bed for four days, CJI Bobde unable to find time for six months to dispose of his bail application, even as his brother Judge granted bail to Shri Arnab Goswami within a day of the case being filed in the SC.
Where are the Indians who were jumping with joy as Kamala Harris was elected VP? She just pretended to be of Indian origin to seek Indian American votes.