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| Pranab facing new challenges | | |
The shifting of Pranab Mukherjee, a senior Indian Cabinet Minister from Defence to External Affairs hardly caused a ripple in the US media, which is now obsessed with the mid-term election fever. The elections to the Senate and the Congress will be held on November 7 and could change the focus and effectiveness of the Bush administration.
The print media as well as the national and regional networks have neither the space nor the time to devote to the development that India, the world's largest democracy, now has a new External Affairs Minister. The US media these days has two or three obsessions all concerned with its own self-interest. Iraq continued to be number one and October witnessed the deaths of the largest number of American soldiers.
Iraq was also important because it is one of the key issues in the November elections. Interviewed prior to the polls, voices in the administration, including those of President Bush and his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, betrayed a clear sense of direction and helplessness. Bush will not commit himself on how long US forces will remain in Iraq nor on the future role of his country in that embattled country.
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On the TV screen, the puppet Prime Minister of Iraq continued to cut a sorry figure, as no one appeared to consult him on major decisions including those pertaining to the course of the war. On the foreign front for the media, Afghanistan came second in order or priority. While the NATO forces had been condemned for the increasing number of civilian deaths in military operations, neither the media nor the US leadership had any clue as to how the Taliban continued to strike often and effectively at soft targets.
While the Bush administration had nothing but praise for the Musharraf government in Pakistan, the media as well as leadership from both the Republicans and Democrats, freely admitted that the Taliban could not be so potent without the direct help from Rawalpindi. Yet, their President thought nothing of patting Musharraf frequently on the back, holding him up as an ideal US ally in the global war against terrorism.
The Palestinians and their struggle against Israel was another area which interested the US administration and the media. As for the rest of the world, they may just as well did not exist. Since in today's line of thinking at our External Affairs Ministry, the US was projected as holding all the trumps, Pranab Mukherjee will have a tough time in focusing US interest back to India. This will not happen soon, not till the Senate and the Congress elections were over and the US entered a new era in political thinking and alignments.
The media is forecasting a big victory for the Democrats in the elections to both the bodies. The Republican majority had ruled the nation for nearly ten years and the time had come for a change. Pollsters all over the nation are predicting that even Republican incumbents will be defeated by their Democratic opponents.
As the polling day approached, the fight appeared to become personal and dirty. Little known personal issues about the candidates which had no relevance from the past were being dug up mostly by the Republicans and the right wing media to smear the Democrats. In the close contest to the Virginia state senate seat, the Democratic candidate, a one-time novelist is accused of corrupting the morals of the electorate because of sexually explicit passages he wrote in a novel published some 25 years back!
Such a strategy seemed to have the approval of the White House. Bush himself was photographed shaking hands and campaigning for a candidate who not only had a few mistresses but was also accused of beating her up! So much for the high moral tone of the right wing Republican camp, which had not been able to get over the stigma of the Foley scandal where the present Senator from Florida, Mark Foley, had been exposed sending sexually explicit e mail messages to a number of young male pages working for the Senate.
After the exposure, Foley confessed being a gay and blamed it all on a childhood experience of molestation by a parish priest. When contacted, the priest, now 69 and living abroad, said that there had been no sexual contact though he had fondled young Foley! This is the level of campaigning for the most important political body in the US.
Of course, India's new External Affairs Minister and his Ministry need not bother about the election mudslinging in the US. But if there is a change of power in the Senate and the Congress in the US, India had to reorient its own priorities while dealing with the US. The Democrats, if elected to power, will closely examine the foreign policy agreements signed with several other nations.
India, of course, had plenty of friends among the Democrats and there should be no danger of any of the currently signed agreements being jeopardised. The Nuclear treaty signed with the Bush administration had won the approval of a number of leading Democrats and the new Senate should not normally question the details. What needed to be stressed here is that the MEA should start doing its homework on these issues. After the exit of Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian governments had been obsessed with staying in power and paid more attention to domestic issues.
The MEA no longer was used effectively to project India as a major power. We saw the effects of such dithering in the power struggle to get into the charmed circle of the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council and the election to the post of the UN Secretary General where the case for the Indian candidate was not pursued with any vigour. One hopes that the wishy washy attitude of the MEA would be given up with the ascension of Pranab Mukherjee. Here too there are contradictions.
Of course, Mukherjee is a seasoned politician, trusted by Congress President, Sonia Gandhi. But like most other political leaders of the current crop, he was more involved in domestic issues. Indian political pundits maintained that Mukherjee wanted to be the Home Minister and had no interest in external affairs. There were also rumours that he was handpicked by the Congress party to stop the visible `tilt' of the MEA towards the US.
The policy making of the MEA, it was pointed out, had been taken over by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) where many of the economic experts had cast their lot with the US. Such a `tilt', real or imaginary, has caused friction between the Congress and the Leftists and Pranabda may be able to assuage the feelings of the fellow Bengali babus of the Left Front that the MEA in the days to come would follow a more centrist policy. Since the thrust of governments all over is now at the economic levels, this could be a difficult job.
But then, India had the proud tradition of pursuing an independent foreign policy even during the days of its dire poverty. Once the battle of the Senate and Congress had been fought and won in the US, the MEA will have to do a lot of rethinking and assume a role that the US could not take India for granted. This had been happening over the past few years. With his decades-long experience in government, it will be interesting on how, Pranab, who has the reputation of getting on well with everyone, handles these sensitive issues.
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