When the administration rolls out the red carpet to welcome Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington next week, the real action won't be around the elegantly set tables at the Obama's first state dinner. It will be over at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That's right: The same folks who are spending millions to fight any government action to prevent climate change are about to be put in charge of the relationship between two of the countries most essential to finding solutions for that and other pressing global challenges.
As Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia put it at an "India Day" celebration at defense and communications giant Honeywell: "The most important part of our relationship is that increasingly governments matter less and less and it's more about empowering the private sector and our businesses, our scientists, educators so that they can all work together to achieve great things." Honeywell's CEO David Cote is the head of the newly expanded India-U.S. CEO Forum which will meet during the Indian prime minister's visit.
The India side is headed by Ratan Tata, one of seven Indian CEOs who will accompany the prime minister. While in Washington, Prime Minister Singh will address the United States India Business Council, part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the biggest lobbyist for the U.S.-India nuclear deal, which saw final approval in the last weeks of the George W. Bush administration. In fact, to clear one of the last remaining hurdles of the deal, the Indian cabinet just green-lighted a provision to make immune from liability U.S. nuclear plant builders in the event of an accident. This is no small feat in a country that still hasn't gotten over the Union Carbide poisonous gas leak in Bhopal, the worst industrial accident in history. The bill must still pass India's parliament.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has identified five pillars of the U.S.-India relationship: strategy, agriculture, healthcare, science and technology and education. In all cases, the Obama administration is putting the private sector in the driver's seat. As Robert Blake put it at meeting in Washington last Wednesday: "[T]he Obama administration would really like to do much more to try to engage the private sector, both in private-public partnerships, but also in advising and working with both governments, to see how we can make the private sector portion bring the private sector to the fore in all of these dialogues."
In other words, the goal of the Obama administration is to hand over policy making on the issues most critical to the people of India and the United States -- climate change, agriculture, education -- to major corporations. I hope the right-wing ranters who've slammed Obama for socialism are paying attention here 'cause this democratic administration is bent on boldly going where no Republican government has gone before in ceding a relationship it says is one of our most important to big business. Blake again: "Traditionally, the private sector has been mostly engaged on the economic side of things as you might expect in trying to promote trade and investment. But we now have an opportunity to work in some of these new areas like energy, education and science and technology."
When I asked Ambassador Blake at a meeting hosted by the Asia Society in New York on November 10 specifically about any possibility of room for sustainable agriculture in the U.S.-India relationship, which has privileged biotechnology, genetic engineering and other elements of a corporate-driven "second" Green Revolution he conceded there might be but reiterated that, in any case, it would be business that would decide, perhaps with the USDA. This amounts to pretty much the same crew, given the revolving door between the USDA and American agribusiness.
On privileging U.S.-India Inc. in the relationship between our two democracies, the government of Manmohan Singh could not be more in agreement. On the India side, free-marketeer and long-time head of India's Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia is credited with playing a major role in putting the focus of the relationship squarely on business, emphasizing India's relative economic strength to a still fragile U.S. economy, while India's Confederation of Indian Industry has worked hand-in-glove with the USIBC to chart a "pro-growth" agenda for Prime Minister Singh's visit.
This "pro-growth" strategy has done wonders for India, or at least for some Indians. On the latest Forbe's billionaire's list, Indians doubled their number from 27 to 54 in 2009. These 54 extremely wealthy Indians account for 25% of India's total GDP. As for the rest of India's 1.2 billion people, India still ranks a shocking 134th on the UNDP's Human Development Index.
In fact, as India has liberalized its economy, raised its foreign direct investment caps and embraced the kind of private-public partnerships the Obama administration is so bullish about, the gap between its have-mores and its have-nothings has grown not shrunk. Where the private sector has been in charge of agriculture, especially hawking the genetically engineered seeds the Obama administration wants to promote, Indian farmers have committed suicide in record numbers -- more than 100,000 in the past decade of India's high-growth boom times. Where the private sector has been entrusted with education, elite and expensive private schools have flourished. Ditto with healthcare.
We know what putting big business in charge with too little government oversight has done for our own economy. To the Obama administration's credit, outsourcing American jobs to India during these difficult times of record unemployment will not be on the agenda. Not directly. Instead, the administration plans to outsource the entire India-U.S. relationship to the private sector, a sector, whether in India or in the United States, whose job it is to put profits over people. Outsourcing won't be far behind, in fact that's pretty much what the business-to-business relationship is all about. The temptation of India's low wages and high potential in engineering, science and technology including biotechnology and genetic engineering in pharmaceuticals and agriculture is simply too attractive for corporations that have too much sway over both governments.
So, after the Singh-Obama summit this November, say good-bye to the interests of small farmers in India and ordinary working people in America where the real solutions to sustainability and green technologies should be focused, and hello to U.S.-India Inc. President Obama, if you happen to read this, know one thing: Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. both would be appalled.