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Bill Clinton's visit cannot lead to any miracles

Every schoolchild knows the sun rises in the east. From time to time, however, I wonder if the Indian establishment -- not least my colleagues in the media -- are aware of that fact. A century and a half of Macaulayist education has given India opinion-makers who take their cues exclusively from the West. And two presidential visits show just how racist the media can be in India.

A visitor who came to India last week was President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia. One who is supposed to be coming in six weeks or so is President Bill Clinton of the United States. But the media's treatment of the two could not be more different. President Wahid did not rate a headline on the front page even on the day that he arrived. (The newspapers offered no more than a cursory photograph, and the electronic media were just as bad.) But the media hype about the American's visit has already started making the front pages with mind-numbing regularity.

I said this displays a degree of racism, which is demonstrably true. But let us not forget that racism is also fundamentally a very stupid policy. And this too is true when you consider the potential impact of the two visits to India by these two heads of state.

Let us begin by examining what the visit by President Clinton means in actual terms. Is India suddenly going to reverse longstanding policies and sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty? Is the United States going to ease the visa restrictions for Indians or lift the quotas on Indian textiles? Will India allow the United States to intervene in the Kashmir dispute?

Obviously not! A visit by an American chief executive to New Delhi cannot lead to any miracles any more than if his Indian counterpart went off to Washington. Take the NPT and CTBT for instance, two topics where the Americans, not least Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, have been voluble. These are precisely the two issues where the Government of India is least ready to give ground; from the RSS to the Congress, Indians are opposed to signing either pact. Nor can the Vajpayee government accept the United States as an intermediary in its relations with Pakistan.

No, there is not a single substantive measure that will come about as a result of President Clinton's visit. I am sure it will look wonderful on television as the mounted President's Bodyguard accompanies his limousine up Raisina Hill, the late afternoon sunlight gleaming off swords and lances. But let us not pretend that this visit will do anything to deepen any understanding between India and the United States.

How about the visit by President Wahid? Now this was a classic case of missed opportunities. India and Indonesia are two nations that have much to offer each other. Indonesia is one of the largest nations in the world in terms of population and also a country that is blessed with ample mineral resources (not least oil). President Wahid himself is an Islamic scholar of some standing and a man who had the courage to take up the struggle against the Suharto dictatorship. He is now a democratically elected leader who is involved in showing his military the bounds of their power.

In other words, Indonesia offers ample opportunities for Indian entrepreneurs to exercise their talents (more so than in the saturated United States). The President of Indonesia in his own person is a rather admirable man. (How many parents would care to hold up President Clinton as a role model to their children?)

Yet the Indian media barely paid any attention when President Wahid of Indonesia came calling. In stark contrast, the proposed visit of President Clinton already has reporters queuing up to pay homage. (They aren't alone -- the chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are behaving much as the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharaja of Mysore might have when the King-Emperor sailed up!) Even granted that the United States is by far the more powerful and richer of the two, I still hold that India had more to gain from strengthening links with Indonesia.

A quirk of history has made Greenwich the timekeeper to the world. But that fact should not lead the Indian media to believe that the sun rises in the west.

T V R Shenoy