The Rajya Sabha MP dismissed suggestions that India and USA had any shared values between them saying had it been the case India could have been among the best of friends of the US as the largest democracy since 1947.
Rajya Sabha MP Mani Shankar Aiyar today dismissed the 'hype' surrounding US President Barack Obama's assertion that India has 'emerged', saying a "poor country like ours" can never aspire to become a superpower.
"Why is this illusion that we are an emerging power, that's because we want someone to hold the mirror and say we are the fairest of them all. That's why Mr Obama obliges and tells us that we have emerged," he said at a function here.
"I don't think we can ever become a global economic power and global military power. And I am delighted we won't because global economic powers and global military powers have been responsible for most of the bloodshed."
He said India stands way below in the human development index, noting that 77% of the people live on less than Rs20 a day, 47% of the children upto five suffer from moderate or severe malnutrition and the infant mortality rate is very high.
He dismissed suggestions that India and USA had any shared values between them saying had it been the case India could have been among the best of friends of the US as the largest democracy since 1947.
"I don't think we have any shared values. What we have is the shared new defence relationship. If shared values would have determined our relationship, we should have been the best of friends in 1947 when we became a full-fledged democracy," he said.
Aiyar said the only 'genuinely' historic element at the joint communique issued at the end of the Obama visit lies 'tucked' away in the middle where Obama went further than any of his predecessors in accepting joint responsibility with India to lead global efforts for non-proliferation and universal and non-discriminatory global nuclear disarmament in the 21st century.
"With this, in exchange for us not stressing our objections to the fundamentally unequal and asymmetric provisions of the NPT, Obama accepted several of the crucial concepts underlying the 1988 Rajiv Gandhi action plan for a nuclear weapon-free and non-violent world order," he said.
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