Posted on 07/20/2005 8:37:23 AM PDT by CarrotAndStick
Haroon Siddiqui says India is now among America's closest allies
America is disliked around the world, including in Canada, but its popularity is soaring in India.
That nugget in a recent 16-nation survey represents a remarkable development.
It shows how quickly and how much India has changed. Also how America, under Bill Clinton and, mostly, George W. Bush, has wooed India and the other emerging giant, China.
Washington is abuzz as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrives at the White House tomorrow and addresses a joint session of Congress.
This is the backdrop against which Indians emerge as the exception in the poll of 17,000 people done by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre.
Indians like America the most — 71 per cent, second only to Americans, themselves, at 83 per cent (vs. only 59 per cent of Canadians who think well of the U.S.).
Indians disagree the most that America is unilateral: 63 per cent say it does care for their concerns (vs. 19 per cent of Canadians who think so).
India is the only nation, besides America, where a plurality agrees with Bush that the war on Iraq has made the world safer. This despite the fact that three-fourths also say India was right not to have joined the war.
Indians are the only ones to name America as a land of opportunity for the young.
This is quite a turnaround.
Pro-Soviet India used to be reflexively anti-American. Recently released papers show Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger calling Indira Gandhi "a bitch" and urging China to attack India in 1971. An anti-India resolution was barely defeated in Congress in 1995.
Today, India is emerging as among America's closest allies, with the India caucus in Congress boasting 190 members.
Helping put India on the U.S. map have been 1.6 million Indo-Americans, a highly successful immigrant community.
But India is important on its own. It is the world's 10th biggest economy. The World Bank puts its GDP at $692 billion U.S., ahead of South Korea, Mexico, Australia, Russia etc.
Indian consumers, led by a middle class of 300 million, are splurging $330 billion a year, while China's are into savings, despite official pleas, thus holding back the domestic economy.
China's is the much larger economy, of course. But India's is big enough, growing at between 6 and 8 per cent a year.
India is well past being a centre for outsourcing (400,000 American tax returns were done there last year). It boasts a $20 billion a year hi-tech sector and several global corporations. The Tata conglomerate, owner of Tetley Tea of Britain and Daewoo Motors of South Korea, expects revenues of $24 billion this year.
India still has problems galore. A quarter of its 1.2 billion people are poor. Forty per cent remain illiterate. Half the children are undernourished.
But democracy works.
After more than a decade of nasty Hindu nationalism, secularism has reasserted itself.
An attack last week on a Hindu temple was diffused. It was at the site where in 1992 Hindu extremists destroyed a 16th-century mosque, triggering an anti-Muslim massacre. But this time the opposition Hindu party failed to get public support.
India's relations with China and Pakistan are improving.
Singh has met with Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf twice. They are even talking about troubled Kashmir. Travel restrictions are being eased. Cricket has resumed.
That all three nuclear nations are getting along is due in part to the quiet and constructive cajoling of the Bush administration.
Bush is inclined to back India's bid to join an expanded Security Council, despite the objections of Pakistan, with which he co-ordinates the war on terrorism.
Bush and Singh will disagree on only two points.
Singh will say Pakistan is yet to fully dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism that supplied infiltrators into Kashmir.
Bush will press a point of his own. He opposes a gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan to India. The 2,700-kilometre line makes sense. But America has a blind spot about Iran; so it's offering India nuclear reactors instead, which makes no sense.
These, however, are minor matters in the larger Indo-Sino-American axis, with Pakistan thrown in between.
India has now 1.2 billion people? In that growth rate, they'll be starving for food in another decade.
Nope. That's why I mentioned the barf factor. The author's mistaken China for India, or is an ignorant idiot. I posted this here since I thought it an interesting read.
"It was at the site where in 1992 Hindu extremists destroyed a 16th-century mosque," which was actually built on a Hindu temple. The author is a muslim liar and his bias is obvious.
India's current population isn't 1.2 billion. And Paul Ehrlich could tell you that predictions about starvation and famine due to overpopulation have a way of looking ridiculous in hindsight.
"But democracy works.
After more than a decade of nasty Hindu nationalism, secularism has reasserted itself. "
Murderous rampages aren't usually religious.
They're the acts of power hungry people who call themselves religous leaders and use the mask of religion to gain power.
Secularism is not a unifying force.
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