>>Anthony D'Costa >Briefly, the nuke story everyone knows: US sanctions, Tokyo's aid cut-off, >the lack of consensus among the G-8 regarding the sanctions, etc. >Important questions have arisen whether India will be able to weather the >sanctions. I think so. India's external exposure is very small (the >globalization debate comes to mind). At the same time the current Indian >leadership has taken a war-mongering posture, being remote controlled by >the hardliners of the BJP. China has now accused India of the 1962 >aggression and claims India's hegemonic ambitions. Pakistan's internal >politics is virtually pushing it to explode a bomb! > >India's relationship with the US is best seen in the software industry, >whereby US MNCs are setting up hi tech centers and at the same time the US >government has raised the quotas for foreign engineers to enter the US. >Naturally sanctions cannot be that devastating. A friend commented that >India's corruption results in billions of dollars of leakages so what kind >of a havoc would a cut off of a few billions do. _____________ My guess is Pakistan is going to get a bomb sooner or later, so everybody will have a bomb and there will be peace in the region. Of course, India's bomb is not for Pakistan but for China. Two questions interest me in this context. One, now that India has become world's bad boy, is it going to initiate a more self reliant (i.e. away from globalization) policy on economic front? BJP never was enthusiastic about globalization, so will it take this sense of "national purpose" to forge some sort of self reliant economic policy? Second, my sense was that the relationship with China was improving in the last few years. What has happened to deterioate it to this extent? Why didn't they allow Martin Scorsese to shoot Kun Dun in India then? Cheers, ajit sinha __________ > >An American friend reported from the US: > >The bomb tests of course made big news here. Commentators and government >officials have been trying to each out do the other in formulating >expressions of outrage and condemnation. Such hypocritical bullshit. Not >that I'm any fan of nuclear weapons, but I'm stunned (maybe I should be >used to it by now) of the general level of stupidity in our public >discourses about India. The policy moves being discussed are exactly what >you'd want to do if you wanted to be counterproductive, or so it seems to >me. The administration and Congress seem eager to now solidly embrace >Pakistan, for re-assurance, in the name of parity, and to see if they can >be promised enough rewards to dissuade them from setting off a few bombs >themselves. China too is in the game, offering as yet unspecified >assurances to Pakistan. I just read in the TNT today something to the >effect of China's identification of India as an "enemy" and a "threat to >China's national security." So with sanctions and these emerging cosy >arrangements between the U.S. and its undemocratic, authoritarian, >human-rights-squashing buddies, Pakistan & China, India, I hate to say it, >probably has more reason than ever to seek to become a nuclear power in >its own right. Even though I personally wish all this nuclear busines was >headed in the opposite direction, the Indian government's decision is not >only understandable, it will probably pay off internationally in the long >run. As China and Pakistan have both shown, the U.S. will evidently >respect you and constructively "engage" you only if you are a bad boy in >their eyes. Now that India has also become a bad boy, it can probably >count on more respect and consideration from the U.S. in the long run. >In the short run however India can probably count on more shrill, >self-righteous, vein-popping rhetoric from the U.S. side. But as they say >in advertising, there's no such thing as bad publicity... India has made >it onto the mental map of American politics in a big way in the past few >weeks. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. > >----------------------------- >Junoon is a popular Pakistani rock group who sing in the vernacular (Urdu). > They are highly popular in India as well. So while bombs of all sorts >were going up (and down) the young generation of the MTV culture had >transcended such jingoistic postures and sought to dance themselves away. > >Cheers, Anthony > >
