Bush League

Fifty Thousand Muslims protested the arrival of George W. Bush at New Delhi...
Thus reads the front page of the Herald Tribune. Every single Indian news channel is interviewing various "intellectuals" from different walks of life on their opinion of Bush, the visit, its significance & seemingly, all things American. When Bush lands in a foreign country, it seems the rhetoric, anti Americanism & vilification of the President follows automatically. And India has, sadly, not been an exception to this unwritten but very much followed rule.

Being a keen follower of international relations & foreign policy issues, I am at once disappointed & embarrassed by my supposedly intellectual Indian brethren. The anti US rhetoric has reached almost laughable proportions at this moment in time. It seems that eager beaver anchors & intellectually bankrupt news channels see this as a good way to whip up waves of sensationalist news flashes by stoking the interviewees into making statements all of which have but one message: "America in general & Bush in particular are two things we love to hate...and by God we shall let the whole bloody world know this". I managed to catch a few minutes of the doublespeak on TV where Booker prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy (author of God of Small Things)was spewing the mind numbing anti-Bush rhetoric. So I flipped the TV off to read the Economist and there she was again. Here she has been quoted as saying, "Welcoming Bush would be equivalent to welcoming a brick through your windscreen"

While I don't doubt Ms. Roy's abilities as an author, I think her perception of the world & the subsequent view she shares of it could improve....firstly by intimating her that we now live in 2006 and not 1966...that India now realises the folly that was the Non Aligned Movement...that golden arches & chicken eating colonels are as much a part of modern India as was hand woven cloth 50 years ago.

I could go on but I will try to extricate myself from the trap that is rhetoric. I feel the media, the "intellectuals", the Jurassic like Left parties & in many cases the common man are missing the point.

- Yes America has waged an erroneous & some would be right in saying illegal war in Iraq, which was founded on a pigment of the Bush administration's imagination

- Yes Bush is, at best is a bumbling politician lacking charisma & guile; at worst a cowboy most comfortable with fellow Texan high society

And I could go on with a few more such debacles...however to do so would be to miss the point and confuse issues like the media & several others have done. Why?

- Anyone remotely clued into modern geo political posturing & global economic trends will tell you that India & US are, SHOULD be natural allies. Economically, a stronger US India relationship offers immense potential for both to gain, India more so than the US.

-Foreign policy wise, the US has made a concession of mammoth proportions by allowing civilian nuclear technology exchange to be on the negotiating table. Some may call it a carrot but even so, a carrot this size has to be taken seriously.

- The US is the beacon of democracy which the world still needs...and for India, a similar country to not welcome further exchange at all levels with the US will be akin to the folly committed 50 years ago when our leaders decided to tilt toward a communist Russia!

- In short, a stronger relationship with the US will only result in the Indian economy benefitting, technology being enhanced, cleaner fuel sources being set up, more exchange in the areas of business, defense, science & medicine.

So if we were to measure the pros versus the cons, its a no brainer really. At least one man I think has had the good sense to grasp the magnitude of the situation: India's top politician the Prime Minister Mr. Singh broke traditional diplomatic protocol this evening and was himself present to welcome Mr. Bush at Delhi airport. Immediately I can sense a hundred voices denouncing this action & calling it unnecessarily servile but the way I look at it: if you only have to gain & gain big time from a situation, a little detour from convention hurt no one.

On a personal note: Welcome Mr. Bush & I sincerely hope those curries you are bound to sample over the next 4 days aren't too spicy.