The Hindu : National : `Team Manmohan' is happy

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 05, 2004

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National

`Team Manmohan' is happy

By Harish Khare

NEW DELHI, NOV. 4. The Manmohan Singh administration is clearly elated at the re-election of George W. Bush as President of the United States. The warm tone in the Prime Minister's letter of congratulations to Mr. Bush reflects a feeling that is widely shared in the Government.

A day before the votes were counted in the U.S., the External Affairs Minister, Natwar Singh, was predicting a Bush victory. At an iftaar party on November 2, Mr. Singh was telling his interlocutors that "a Bush win would be good for India." For a man who began his foreign ministerial innings with a reputation of being an "old-fashioned anti-American," Mr. Singh has come to appreciate the Bush foreign policy team; in particular, he has struck a rapport with the Secretary of State, Colin Powell and will be happy to carry the relationship forward if Gen. Powell stays in the job.

The foreign policy establishment, by and large, is comfortable with the idea of working with known faces in Washington. For example, it is believed that the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, J.N. Dixit, had developed a "useful and working" relationship with Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser to Mr. Bush.

The hope is that Ms. Rice would get elevated — according to speculation in the American media — to the office of the Secretary of State; in that case, the National Security Adviser post would probably go to Robert Blackwill, former U.S. Ambassador to India and currently a deputy to Ms. Rice.

Reformers elated

More than the foreign policy managers, the happiest crowd perhaps is the group of "economic reformers" in the Union Cabinet. A few days ago, a senior Minister was reported to have observed: "Senator John Kerry was bound to lose, because he has been endorsed both by the New York Times and the Washington Post."

These economic managers in the Manmohan Singh administration hope that Mr. Bush's triumph on an aggressively neo-conservative platform would ensure a kind of intellectual and policy environment worldwide that would help them carry forward the economic reform agenda in India. Many of these economic managers look upon the neo-conservatives of the Republican variety as policy soul-mates. The Manmohan Singh team hopes to deepen the economic ties between the two countries.

The reformers believe that the critical middle classes in India appreciate Mr. Bush, if only by default because Mr. Kerry had voiced his opposition to "outsourcing" of "American jobs" to call-centres in countries such as India. These reformers now expect the same middle classes to be more receptive to the idea of "opening up" of the Indian economy to the American investor.

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