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ShareThe symbolic value of being the guest of honour at Barack and Michelle Obama's first state banquet in the White House cannot hide the changes that are increasingly evident in Washington's India policy under a Democrat-led administration. Gone is the star billing that India enjoyed with former president George Bush. Instead, as Obama reorders American priorities in an attempt to undo Bush's unpopular legacy, New Delhi seems to be slowly slipping off his radar.
"We are a very tiny blip for Obama," says former national security advisor Brajesh Mishra. "My feeling is that we are back to the days of the first term of the Clinton administration when India hardly mattered to the Americans."
Worse, all the dreaded pinpricks from the Clinton era threaten to reappear to bedevil the relationship. Analysts believe that pressure on both the Kashmir and nuclear issues will return as Obama firms up his foreign policy agenda. "The nuclear issue will be particularly troublesome for us with all those non-proliferation ayatollahs back in Washington," saysTP Sreenivasan, former Indian ambassador to Vienna and the International Atomic Energy Agency. "Although both India and the US have the same goal of disarmament, Obama's route is through treaties that are not acceptable to us, like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Control Treaty."
It would be simplistic to dismiss the apparent drift in Indo-US relations as an inevitable consequence of a switchover from a Republican administration to a Democrat one. Most analysts feel that part of the problem lies with the Manmohan Singh government, which seems to be out of ideas on ways of engaging the Obama administration.
For instance, India has virtually slammed the door on the US president's special envoy for Af-Pak, Richard Holbrooke, by refusing to schedule appointments for him in New Delhi for the past two months. "There seems to be a problem of chemistry with Holbrooke," says former Indian ambassador to the US Lalit Mansingh. "He is known to be abrasive and is not an easy man to get on with. But why do we object if he wants to come here and brief us on his talks in Afghanistan and Pakistan?"
The sense of confusion has been exacerbated by glaring personality differences between the principals themselves. As Mansingh explains, "Bush was effusive and had an emotional approach to policy-making. He made it easy for us. Obama is more cerebral and has the capacity to pursue different ideas at the same time. We need to engage his mind by tossing ideas at him instead of being prickly and seeking reassurance all the time."
Manmohan Singh's upcoming trip to Washington presents him with an opportunity to not just put the stuttering relationship back on track, but to breathe new life into it. While the strategic depth that Bush envisaged for Indo-US ties may not fit in with Obama's vision for this region, there is plenty to do on other fronts. "I believe the Indo-US joint statement presents us with a common minimum programme by listing out areas for cooperation like agriculture, education, the promotion of democracy," says Mansingh.
The difficulty is that policymakers in New Delhi seem to be unsure of what they want and how to get it. Says Rahul Roy-Chaudhary, senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, "The world is changing rapidly. We have to raise our game and build our leverages so that we can move beyond the parapet of South Asia."
