An apocryphal quote attributed to Winston Churchill has this to stay about Americans: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they have exhausted all other possibilities.”
Having done their damnedest to undercut the India story – by imposing extraordinarily tariffs, changing laws to prevent Indian students and services professionals from working in the US, and even sending a Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, to tell us that the US won’t help India rise – the US is now sending different signals. In particular, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in India on a charm offensive. He visited the Reliance Jamnagar refinery to check out the capabilities of the world’s biggest single-site and most complex refinery – one that can process Venezuelan heavy crudes.
Not just that, Rubio and Ambassador Sergei Gor went out their way to engage the Indian media by giving them interviews that really said nothing much that we didn’t already know. These interviews were meant to lull Indians into a false sense of complacency that India-US relations are back to normal.
To go back to the quote above, the Americans cannot still be trusted to do the right thing with India, for they have not yet run out of other, worse, options. Like, for example, arming Pakistan or Bangladesh. This is only a tactical olive branch to us.
Some degree of normality is always needed in every global relationship, and it is good that the US is at least on talking terms, if only because they need our refining capacities to bring diesel prices down back home. US diesel prices are more than $6.2 (or more) per gallon (or $1.63 a litre, which works out to Rs 155 per litre at current exchange rates). Diesel prices in India are in the range of Rs 95-97 per litre.
So let us be clear: Rubio did not come to India because the US has suddenly had a change of heart. He is here because he needs us in the short-term, just as he needs Russian diesel to cool prices back home. This is a purely transactional move.
What this implies are three things:
One, the Modi government’s decision to play the waiting game with the US is paying off a little bit. It is time for a small pat in the back, but not self-congratulation. There is still a long way to go. The US Deep State would still like to do everything possible to slow down India’s rise. We should never forget that.
Two, our main goal is to do everything possible internally to keep growth chugging along at 7-8 percent for the next 10 years, so that we become an $8-10 trillion economy. It is then that the US will start treating us as worthy of a real mutually beneficial conversation. We must build out strengths and bide our time, as Deng Xiaoping would say.
Three, we should try and conclude the best possible trade deal with the US for now, and continue diversifying our trade from over-dependence on Uncle Sam. This is not the time for forgive and forget with the US, as we tend to do always whenever things begin to look better.
The conclusion: Narendra Modi is driving us in the right direction so far. It is now important to not celebrate prematurely. It is time to batten down the hatches and build strengths quietly. Unfortunately, democracies demand that successes should be tom-tommed by political parties, not kept under wraps. But despite what our politicians claim in order to win elections, the state cannot give in to the comforting thought that we are growing faster than the rest. We must remind ourselves that we also have further to go than the rest. We have to pull our just-above-poverty-line population to middle income status by the end of the next decade. That is not something Rubio’s sweet talk will help us achieve. We have to do it ourselves.
R Jagannathan is an editor and the former editorial director at Swarajya magazine. He tweets @TheJaggi. Views are personal.
This article has been republished from the author’s personal blog. Read the original article here.