BHARAT HAS TO PLAY A LARGER ROLE IN THE EAST

India has to play a larger role in the East

Professor M. V. Kamath
The Free Press Journal
Friday, November 14, 2003

In the 1850's, the United States of America was, to use a
current phrase, a developing country.  The continent was
vast and, strangely enough, hardly occupied, except by
scores of "Indian' tribes. Millions of acres of
cultivable land were just waiting to be ploughed.  The
land was waiting for people. About that time there
appeared an article in the Terre Haute Express (1851),
one sentence of which made history. It just said: "Go
West, Young man. Out there in the West", the article
said, "lay opportunities". They lay indeed. Going West
almost became synonymous with looking for opportunities
for growth. Interestingly enough, in those dark days
businessmen and adventurers in Europe, then
civilisationally forward-looking a continent, were
looking not westward but eastward towards India where lay
opportunities for trade and commerce thither to undreamt
of. The vast unemployed and under-employed in Europe,
including Britain, had eyes only for Asia.

>>From Portugal, Spain, Britain, France and Holland,
thousands upon thousands from the aristocracy, the middle
classes and the riff-raff came in shiploads to India and
lands further east like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand,
Vietnam and Cambodia for first trade, then loot and
finally conquest.

Vast lands in the East came under the boots of western
marauders. India, in particular, paid a terrible price
for being disunited. The fight at first was between the
British and the French, for getting the upper hand in
India. The British won. Indian trade went into the hands
of the British who fully exploited the situation.  Indian
industry was systematically killed. For centuries, Dacca
muslin was famous internationally. British rulers, it is
claimed, cut off the hands of the muslin weavers and
export of Indian textiles came to a painful halt. Indian
commerce tapered off at first gradually, and then
swiftly.

In the eighteenth century India had a high 30 per cent or
more of the share of world trade. In the decades to come
that share was to go down to less than 1 per cent. Thanks
to accumulated wealth, Britain was first to make to the
Industrial Revolution. When, once, it was India's
textiles that had world market, by the beginning of the
20th century, Britain had taken the lead. That is past
history.

Yet, for decades India continued to look westward. For
one thing, the West had developed very fast. For another
India was a colony and could look only to Britain for
succour. The Great Indian Middle Class could only look
towards Britain for training whether in industry or
education or employment.  A British degree was a passport
to success. It speaks something for the inferiority
complex of the Indian Middle Class that even after India
became free, for years a degree from Oxford, Cambridge,
the London School of Economics and still later from
Harvard, Georgia Tech or the University of California Los
Angeles (UCLA) was considered necessary to get entry into
the widening execution world of Indian commerce. Now
things have changed.

Since the liberalisation of the economy under the
Narasimha Rao government but more especially in the last
five years, India has been taking giant strides.
Liberalisation led to greater economic activity freed
from the shackles of License Raj. Shedding one's
complexes vis-a-vis the West led to more aggressive
action on the part of Indian entrepreneurs. We now can
see the results. Indians who once went to the States for
greater opportunities are now returning in droves. Indian
educational centres are getting marked out for
excellence.

Bangalore and Hyderabad are being recognised as the
Indian equivalent of Silicon Valley. More importantly,
India is now looking Eastward towards ASEAN countries to
get back the markets it had lost to the West. The second
India-ASEAN summit recently held in Bali (Indonesia)
indicates the progress made since 1991 when New Delhi
first announced its look East policy.

The tide is turning. On October 9, India and Thailand,
for instance, entered a new era in bilateral cooperation
by signing five agreements, including one on establishing
a free trade area by 2010.  The pact the first to be
signed by India outside South Asia and with an ASEAN
country envisages bringing down duties to zero on 83
items from March 2004. The understanding is that this
would be extended to all services and investment by 2006
and goods by 2010. The other pacts covered cooperation in
agriculture a field in which India has much to offer
tourism and biotechnology. What is significant is the
warm welcome that the Thai Parliament extended to Prime
Minister Vajpayee. He became the first foreign leader to
address both chambers of the Thai Parliament and he was
given a rousing welcome.

India has expressed its willingness to let ASEAN
countries operate unlimited number of flights to India
and in response Thailand will let Indian Airlines fly to
more destinations within its boundaries. A time will soon
come south east Asian countries will look increasingly
towards India for help in various fields. That is but
natural. Culturally India had in past centuries close and
intimate contacts with south east Asian countries.
Thailand is proud of its own Sanskritic heritage.

Indo-Thai links can only be further strengthened when the
India-Myanmar-Thailand highway is completed. There is,
besides, a proposal for a Delhi-Hanoi rail link which
when completed would greatly facilitate not only the
movement goods and people across borders but of ideas as
well. The recent visit of Vice President Sekhawat to
Myanmar therefore takes on added significance.

Asia is emerging as the centre of gravity of a fast-
growing economy and India, as the largest and most
educationally advanced nation has a role to play. Already
in place is India's Framework Agreement with ASEAN and
this will now be complemented by bilateral and sub-
regional moves towards greater economic cooperation.
India's trade with ASEAN increased from $3.5 billion in
1991 to $12.5 billion in 2002 and presently it looks as
if this may exceed $15 billion in the next two years, a
four-fold jump.  Indeed Prime Minister Vajpayee told the
media that if India and ASEAN address a few problem
areas, their trade could jump to $30 billion in the next
few years.

The India-Thailand Free Trade Agreement (FTA) has shown
what is possible. As Vajpayee said: "I think today's
technology revolution and globalisation do not permit any
country, or any group of people, the luxury of being
inward-looking. We have to match with the times, and
India's economic indicators show that we are doing so
with outstanding success".   The furtherance of
cooperation between India and its south eastern
neighbours is only but natural and is in keeping up with
the times. National barriers are breaking down
everywhere.  The world has seen how west European
countries have come together to form the European Union
and to even have a common currency, the Euro. This is the
trend and it cannot be stopped. Regional trade blocks are
springing all over the world and we have NAFTA (North
American Free Trade Area), COMESA (Common Market for
Eastern and Southern Africa)  and a Latin American
grouping known as MERCOSUR.

Research has shown that if ASEAN can work along with
Japan, China, India and South Korea collectively known as
JACIK with a population of over 3 billion (or half that
of the world) and a GNP of over $7.2 trillion (comparable
to that of the European Union) it would be a powerful
force to reckon with.  Already there are moves to form an
East Asian Economic Community and an East Asia Vision
Group (EAVG) has been set up at South Korea's instance,
which only shows that forces are working slowly towards
regional unification that could ultimately lead to higher
and stronger group formations, cutting across language,
ethnic and political barriers. The point to be noted is
that barriers are slowly being removed and nationalism as
we have known is assuming a new meaning and a new tint.

Nations that once were enemies are now coming to realise
that there is much to gain by cooperation than by
conquest. A time may indeed come within South Asia itself
and a new force may emerge. There is talk of a new
economic grouping called BIMSTEC (Bangladesh, Bhutan,
India, Nepal and Sri Lanka) working with Myanmar and
Thailand to promote economic cooperation between them.

If Pakistan is left out, it is for Islamabad to ask why.
As Tennyson might have said, the old order changeth,
yielding place to new and economic needs fulfil
themselves in many ways, lest one good system should
corrupt the world. With economic cooperation comes
cooperation in other fields like security. Resources will
have to be pooled so that no nation within a single
economic community feels under threat. That is where
strong and well-contained nations like India have a role
to play.

Establishing air and land links between India and
countries of South East Asia is only one aspect of the
problem of securitisation of smaller nations. A powerful
Navy, too, would be required to police the sea lanes. In
all such matters India again has a major role to play.
One may be sure that with each passing year India will be
called upon to play a larger and larger role in the East.
India, in that sense, is destined to look Eastward,
because its own economic future lies also there. India's
struggle in past years has not been in vain. But it is
now paying. Well might one say with Arthur Hugh Clough:
"When daylight comes, comes in the light; in front the
sun climbs slow,  how slowly, but westward, look, the
land is bright".

End of forwarded message

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