Finding a new Equilibrium

Twenty years ago I landed in Delhi for the first time, a young college student on a semester abroad.  India was a different place, far away, and we Americans knew little about it.  Back then you’d see khadi-clad Western tourists ambling around CP, Doordarshan was the only channel around (although Prannoy Roy offered a half-hour hint of the future with The World This Week), and talking with parents back home meant booking a trunk call and then waiting around for hours, or trudging to the PCO/STD/ISD booth.  Cows grazed on piles of trash in concrete bins outside our youth hostel (the Vishwa Yuvak Kendra) in the heart of the Diplomatic Enclave.  Today, the tourists in handspun have been replaced by bankers in Brioni; Prannoy Roy now runs a media empire and cuts deals with NBC/Universal and Time Warner; everyone has a mobile phone and the rates are the world’s lowest, shrinking the globe and pulling family instantly close; and there are a lot fewer cows, not to mention no more trash piles, outside the youth hostel, which now also houses India’s preeminent software industry association, NASSCOM.  These bookends of memory show how dramatic a transformation has taken place, and how much more deeply our countries are now intertwined.

The distance, unfamiliarity, and lack of connection between India and the U.S. over much of the twentieth century, as so many have noted, contributed to our inability to realize the obvious potential of this relationship.  What Dennis Kux has aptly termed an “estrangement” was felt not only at the official level (between governments), but was also reflected in the relatively thin linkages outside of government.  Business connections were intentionally limited, a primary result of Indian industrial policies to protect its domestic market.  Academic ties existed but were again thin; exchanges could be measured in the dozens annually.  Nonprofit or NGO sector collaborations were a great strength—look at the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations’ accomplishments, for example—but no one would argue that they were able to propel the relationship forward in and of themselves.

We are in a different place now, not only due to a changed balance of trust between Washington and New Delhi, but as importantly due to the increasing importance of private, nongovernmental actors (for-profit as well as non) in shaping international engagement.  Jessica Mathews wrote more than ten years ago about the great “power shift” reshaping our world—the global decentralization of political and economic power from their locus within state capitals, and the rise of nongovernmental actors, particularly via markets, media, and civil society.  Corporations are global, with employees and interests all over the world.  Technology has transformed our connectivity and our media environment, offering local voices a global platform (and winnowing down the once-privileged role of western media at the same time).  Heightened mobility of labor has created a more flexible global workforce at both the elite as well as unskilled levels, linking populations with families back home.  We now speak routinely about transnational markets, world citizens, and global public goods.

I view these developments as largely positive.  While some see factors of globalization (particularly global corporations and markets) as the signs of a dystopian future, the optimist would see in these shifts the seeds of utterly new kinds of partnership.  I can imagine a world where Indian and American researchers can together invent low-cost solar cells that revolutionize the scale and dissemination potential of solar power—helping us both transition away from coal, and as importantly, helping electrify places where power grids have yet to reach.  Or a world where a hybrid Nano might be a sixteen-year old American’s first car, turning hybrids into an entry-level rather than bourgeois bohemian option.  Or a world where our governments, NGOs, and technology companies leverage the scale and power of decentralized communication to better raise awareness of missing children, giving those in bonded captivity a better chance at being found.

From this vantage point, India and the United States are perfectly situated for the twenty-first century world, and for different kinds of partnerships on systemic global challenges, challenges so big and borderless that they simply cannot be managed by governments alone.  So beyond the obvious transformation in official ties between the U.S. and India—the narrative of estrangement to engagement—I would argue that the growing integration of our private sectors now offers the most important element of possibility for U.S.-India cooperation.  As we observed in the report of the Asia Society’s Task Force on U.S. Policy toward India:

  
Globally, we face a world where our governments confront eroded authority and problems of collective action, with multilateral institutions that no longer reflect current realities, and globalization’s challenges of rapid contagion—whether financial, biological, or digital—that require governmental coordination of the closest kind.  Many of these twenty-first century challenges must be addressed through government initiatives, but many others will require deep engagement with the private sector.  With the great strengths, the ingenuity, and the complementary perspectives that the U.S. and Indian public and private sectors can mobilize, the two countries together have the potential to make a difference to the most pressing challenges of our lifetime.  

The suggestions which follow are offered here to spur discussion on how India and the United States might creatively prod our governments to tap the energy of our private sectors to work collaboratively on global problems:  climate change, counterterrorism, proliferation,  transnational crime (including drug cartels and trafficking of women and children), and humanitarian relief.  None of these can be tackled by government action by itself, so the recommendations below assume the centrality of public-private cooperation for success.  As a result, the orientation of these recommended policy options tends toward techniques of enhancing large-scale coordination and information sharing, better linking policymakers in government with faster-paced innovators in our companies and civil societies, as well as recommendations for government incentives to steer private investment or innovation in directions that benefit the long-term for us all.  Examples are intended to be merely illustrative, not definitive. 
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What Obama should keep in mind during Manmohan Singh’s visit.

In the prolonged American debate over Afghanistan, the country best positioned to increase civilian assistance has not been mentioned: India. When it comes to Afghanistan, India and the United States have convergent interests as well as complementary capabilities. Formalizing our work together would deepen India’s stake in a durable regional solution, and its strong civilian-side capabilities would enhance the developmental effort for the long term. As President Obama ponders our direction in Afghanistan, he should use Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington this week to engage India as a central player in the tough, uphill battle to secure South Asia.

Delhi and Washington view the challenge of stabilizing Afghanistan the same way. Both consider the Afghan insurgency and terrorism it spawns their most pressing national security challenge, and neither wants to see a Taliban-led government return. Both understand that failure will bring even greater dangers to their own doorsteps. Indeed, the growing instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a front-line concern for New Delhi, which does not want to see Mumbai, or any other city, again in flames.

In addition to their military efforts to secure Afghanistan, the United States and NATO have struggled to ramp up economic assistance–the “build” part of counterinsurgency. Unfamiliar cultures and languages and harsh conditions have constrained Western capacity on the ground. As a practical matter, American NGOs have not been able to function outside major population centers in Afghanistan for two decades. Outsourcing to Beltway contractors is not cost-effective, and NATO has been unwilling or unable to help fill the gap.

But India has demonstrated unique and effective capabilities that will make a big difference in Afghanistan. With its historic ties and cultural affinity to the country, India has already provided impressive civilian assistance. It is the fifth-largest bilateral donor to Afghanistan. India’s $1.2 billion contribution to date has supported projects in power, medicine, agriculture and education. Afghanistan’s new parliament meets in a building constructed by India. Indian engineers built a port-access road in violent southern Afghanistan, and India has trained Afghan civil servants, demonstrating an Indian comparative advantage on the ground.

Deeper cooperation in Afghanistan would invest India with a broader stake in the effort to stabilize South Asia. In the process, India will take on a more committed leadership role in Afghanistan’s future and emerge a more willing supporter of regional efforts to ensure a peaceful outcome. Engaging India in a more regular, formal and wide-ranging dialogue on the challenges in Afghanistan–wholly different from the ad-hoc and inconsistent consultation at present–would transform the way we work together, propelling the U.S.-India relationship to a new level of trust. The proposal to create a larger contact group of neighboring countries, including India, was contained in the Riedel report approved by the Obama administration earlier this year–but has not been implemented. At present, Delhi is standing warily aside, concerned that it will be asked to act unilaterally in ways that conflict with its own interest.

India’s potential impact on Afghanistan’s development may prove greater than NATO’s, or our own. Afghanistan’s economic development will require very long-term capacity building work, and India has the ability to make a key, and very efficient, contribution for many years to come. Take agriculture. United States Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been charged with improving agricultural technologies and markets so that Afghan farmers will no longer seek profits from poppy. But India’s agricultural research and extension organizations know much better how to bring about change under subsistence farming conditions.

On the “software” that makes institutions function, India has led the way with civilian assistance training, including through bringing Afghan civil servants to Delhi. India’s trainers have knowledge and expertise better suited for Afghanistan’s situation, and their work with Afghan bureaucrats, judges, teachers, nurses and engineers should be expanded. India could also be helpful with the critical task of training Afghan police on a wide range of law enforcement matters.

Of course, a broader partnership with India in Afghanistan will be bitterly criticized across the border by some who believe that India threatens Pakistan’s security and seeks to “encircle” it. Washington should not validate this perception when our own leadership believes it incorrect, and in that conviction has urged Pakistan to free up forces from the Indian border and deploy them along the al-Qaida-Taliban front to the west. In fact, no evidence suggests that Delhi seeks to undermine Pakistani interests through involvement in Afghanistan–unless those interests include supporting the Taliban and other radicals. If anything, given our own hope for a secure and stable Pakistan, greater coordination with India should reassure Islamabad by making India’s goals more transparent, and should also help reduce tensions between India and Pakistan over time.

With Prime Minister Singh’s arrival in Washington, President Obama has the opportunity to move U.S.-India relations even further toward its promise of strategic partnership. The Obama-Singh summit can infuse fresh purpose and energy to an India-U.S. relationship much transformed over the last decade but still vulnerable to mistrust, especially in matters of South Asian security. A partnership for Afghan development and security–where India can provide the kind of help Afghans, and the international community, need most–is just the place to start.

Marshall M. Bouton is president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Alyssa Ayres is director for India & South Asia at McLarty Associates. Both served on the Asia Society’s Task Force on U.S. policy toward India.

Alyssa Ayres’ fascinating study examines Pakistan’s troubled history by exploring the importance of culture to political legitimacy. Early leaders selected Urdu as the natural symbol of the nation’s great cultural past, but due to its limited base great efforts would be required to make it truly national. This paradox underscores the importance of cultural policies for national identity formation. By comparing Pakistan’s experience with those of India and Indonesia, the author analyzes how their national language policies led to very different outcomes. The lessons of these large multiethnic states offer insights for the understanding of culture, identity, and nationalism throughout the world. The book is aimed at scholars in the fields of history, political theory, and South Asian studies, as well as those interested in the history of culture and nationalism in one of the world’s most complex, and challenging, countries.

• Chronicles Pakistan’s troubled search for identity looking particularly at language and culture • Compares Pakistan’s national language policy and its effects with those of India and Indonesia – the three largest states to emerge from colonial rule • Analyzes political literature of the Punjabiyat movement, not widely discussed in English-language scholarship

• Excerpt from introduction (in pdf)

Chapter Contents

1. Articulating a new nation; 2. Urdu and the nation; 3. The nation and its margins; 4. The case of Punjab: elite efforts; 5. The case of Punjab: popular culture; 6. History and local absence; 7. Bringing back the local past; 8. Speaking like a state: language planning; 9. Religion, nation, language; 10. Conclusion.

Reviews

“Alyssa Ayres has written an important and compelling account of the impact and influence of language and culture on one of the twentieth century’s most dramatic stories – the creation of Pakistan as the very first nation born of a religion. She reveals the extraordinary story of the role that language has played in shaping nationalism and culture in modern Pakistan. Dr Ayres is one of our finest experts on the history, culture and politics of South Asia.”
–Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics, Harvard University and formerly U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs

“An important study into the complexities of language and history in Pakistan which offers unique insights into the fragility of Pakistan as a nation. No country in the world is more important to America than Pakistan and this book helps us understand it better.”
–Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

“Today, when all eyes are focused on Pakistan because of the global geo-political imperatives of fighting the actors who threaten global peace, Alyssa Ayres has provided an insightful analysis of Pakistan’s domestic cultural complexities. By using language policies, linguistic movements and their relationship to the formation of a national identity, Ayres brings cultural issues and trends squarely into the discourse of national polity. This is a rare feat that is desperately needed to better understand our current realities oscillating among global, national, and cultural identities.”
–Vishakha N. Desai, President, Asia Society

“…a finely constructed analytical treatise….brilliantly deployed…offers some real and unique insights into the complex interplay of language, religion and nation-building in Pakistan that are sure to stand the test of time….Ayres’s illuminating study of the contradictory role played by language in the creation of national identity…breaks new ground by showing how the relationship between language and nationalism in Pakistan was deeply compromised by earlier cultural conflicts during the colonial period….in a marvellously rich and counter-intuitive analysis of a burgeoning language movement in Punjab—the acknowledged ‘hegemon’ in Pakistan—Ayres demonstrates that appeals to cultural symbols such as language cannot, in fact, always be dismissed as mere ‘epiphenomenal developments’.”
-Farzana Shaikh, Chatham House (in International Affairs, March 2010)

“…Alyssa Ayres’s 217-page book is a masterful exposition…[her] study on the role of language and nationalism in Pakistan is of crucial importance, particularly in the current context of the growth of radical Islamic extremism in Pakistan. Ayres’s study is compelling and definitive. It is a must read for all those who wish to understand the complexities involved in architecting the nation and/or the idea of Pakistan.”
-Rekha Chakravarthi, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (in The Book Review, February 2010)

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China’s emergence as a great power is transforming the world, affecting its security, economy and physical environment. Power Realignments in Asia: China, India and the United States explores the impact of China’s rise on relations among China, India and the United States.

The topics covered in the collection span traditional security issues-political-military affairs and military modernization-to new challenges posed by rapid and deep economic integration, to global issues like energy security and environmental degradation accompanying rapid economic growth. Each of these issues affects the triangular dynamic among China, India and the United States. A special feature of this volume is that it is an informed assessment of an under-researched theme-China’s complex role in simultaneously promoting and inhibiting Indo-U.S. engagement. It examines the many shades of strategic ambiguity, reflected most recently in China’s response to the historic Indo-U.S. civil nuclear initiative.

This work will be an important resource for all those interested in Asia’s security politics, the American response to the rise of China and India and the changing dynamic of Asian balance of power.

Chapter Contents

Foreword, Ambassador K Raghunath; Foreword, Francine R. Frankel; Introduction, Alyssa Ayres; The Economic Architecture of China in Southeast and Central Asia, Nicholas R Lardy; China’s Economic Resurgence and ‘Flexible Coalitions,’ Vivek Bharati; The Case of China and the Global Environment: Dizzying Growth, Devolution of Power, Environmental Disaster, Elizabeth Economy; Growing India-China Economies, Linked Environmental Concerns, and Emerging Scenarios, P.S. Ramakrishnan; Security Concerns and China’s Military Capabilities: The Eagle, the Dragon, and the Elephant, Jasjit Singh; The Evolving Security Order in Asia: Implications for US-India Relations, David Shambaugh; Energy Security and the Future of Energy Cooperation: China Kenneth Lieberthal; China’s Quest for Energy Security-Implications for the World, Sudha Mahalingam; US and Indian Interests in India’s Extended Neighborhood, Ashley J. Tellis; India and Regional Security Interests, Vikram Sood; The Evolution of Sino-Indian Relations: Implications for the United States, C. Raja Mohan; The Context and Purposes of US-India Strategic Cooperation, Richard J. Ellings; Conclusion: Situating the Realignment, C Raja Mohan and Alyssa Ayres

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Frank G. Wisner and Charles R. Kaye, co-chairs
Alyssa Ayres, director

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A new Asia Society task force outlines a bold new strategy for the incoming US administration to pursue deeper collaboration with India on global challenges ranging from security and economic growth to climate change, education, agricultural needs, and HIV/AIDS.

Executive Summary

As the Obama Administration transitions to power already burdened with global economic crises and two wars, two events underscore India’s importance for US interests: the brutal Mumbai attacks and the financial sector meltdown. The Mumbai attacks reminded Americans of India’s vulnerability to global terrorism, our shared struggle against violent Islamic extremism, and the potential for crisis to rapidly escalate in the region. The financial sector meltdown and the emerging global response showed how India can be a key part of the solution through leadership in global bodies such as the G20.

India matters to virtually every major foreign policy issue that will confront the United States in the years ahead. A broad-based, close relationship with India will thus be necessary to solve complex global challenges, achieve security in the critical South Asian region, reestablish stability in the global economy, and overcome the threat of violent Islamic radicalism which has taken root across the region and in India. The members of this task force believe that the US relationship with India will be among our most important in the future, and will at long last reach its potential for global impact—provided that strong leadership on both sides steers the way.

The new relationship rests on a convergence of US and Indian national interests, and never in our history have they been so closely aligned. With India, we can harness our principles and power together to focus on the urgent interconnected challenges of our shared future: economic stability, expanded trade, the environment and climate change, innovation, nonproliferation, public health, sustainability, and terrorism. Together our two countries will be able to take on some of the most vexing problems facing the world today, and improve the lives and security of our citizens in doing so. But to get there, we must set broad yet realistic goals to be shared by both countries.

This report offers goals toward that ambitious agenda for our shared future. Our task force recommends dramatically enhancing cooperation with India not only between our governments, but also between our governments and both our private sectors. We must tap the private sector momentum in the relationship to address the kinds of big problems governments cannot solve alone.

Over the next four years, we recommend the following priorities for action across two parallel tracks:

Track 1: Strengthening Governmental Ties

• Secure India’s leadership in multilateral institutions to provide the US with a constructive partner in global decision making;
• Expand cooperation toward economic growth, particularly focusing on financial recovery, trade, and investment—managing our current crisis, concluding the Doha Round or its successor, and completing a bilateral investment treaty;
• Expand security cooperation, including a vastly enhanced counterterrorism partnership, expanded consultation on South Asia, stronger maritime cooperation, and new consultation on other key regions of the world;
• Bring India into greater dialogue on the future of nonproliferation, including the NPT review conference, and new efforts to achieve global nuclear disarmament.

Track 2: Joint Public-Private Partnerships for Complex Global Challenges

• Collaborate on climate change, where our dynamic scientific and high-tech communities could work with our policy experts to craft solutions;
• Work toward a Second Green Revolution in India, which will have global impact by profoundly transforming the lives of a quarter of the world’s poor;
• Partner on secondary and higher education, where the training requirements for India’s large population exceeds its current capacity, a challenge uniquely suited for linkages with US institutions;
• Cooperate in awareness and support of HIV/AIDS, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in India, the US, and around the world.

This task force believes deeply in the vast potential of our relationship with India. The compatibility of our values, our strengths, and our global visions offers a unique context for us both to craft an ambitious agenda for the years ahead—for, unusually among two powers, we have no intrinsic conflicts of interest. With a new administration in Washington, and national elections in India during the first half of 2009, we have an opportunity to deliver on the promise that the world’s two largest democracies have to offer each other, and the world.

Task Force Co-Chairs

Ambassador Frank G. Wisner
Vice Chair, American International Group
Ambassador to India, 1994-97

Mr. Charles R. Kaye
Former Chairman
US -India Business Council

Members

Dr. Alyssa Ayres, Task Force Director
Director, McLarty Associates

Mr. Scott R. Bayman
Former President and CEO, GE India; Senior Director, Stonebridge International and Chairman, Stonebridge India

Dr. Marshall M. Bouton
President, Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Dr. Stephen P. Cohen
Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

Dr. Vishakha N. Desai
President, Asia Society

Dr. Amy Gutmann
President, University of Pennsylvania

Mr. Victor J. Menezes
Senior Advisor, New Silk Route Partners, LLC

Dr. Jamie F. Metzl
Executive Vice President, Asia Society

Dr. George Rupp
CEO and President, International Rescue Committee; Former President, Columbia University

Ambassador Teresita Schaffer
Director, South Asia Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Dr. Ashley J. Tellis
Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Hardback (ISBN-13: 978-0765615923)
Paper (ISBN-13: 978-0765615930)

Since 2001, India has gained new attention as an emerging world power with a rapidly growing economy, a world-class science and technology sector, and a huge English-speaking labor pool. After a period of escalating tension with neighbor Pakistan, wide-ranging peace talks are underway. Within India, there is an unprecedented mood of optimism about the future. At the same time, the nation wrestles with difficult questions about the place of secularism in society, the role it sees for itself globally and within Asia, and the reality that millions of Indians still live at the subsistence level.

This volume of India Briefing examines India’s changing fortunes through chapters that cover the economy, the twists and turns of domestic politics, labor in the large informal sector, the cultural roots of Hindu nationalism, the foreign relations rollercoaster, the business of Bollywood, and a special chapter on the range of new resources about India available on the web.

Chapter Contents:

1. Introduction. India Briefing: Takeoff at Last?, Alyssa Ayres and Philip K. Oldenburg; 2. Politics: The BJP Falls from Power, Niraja Gopal Jayal; 3. Indian Economy: New Pathways to Growth and Development, Isher Judge Ahluwalia; 4. India’s International Relations: The Search for Stability, Space, and Strength, Amitabh Mattoo; 5. The Cultural Background of Hindutva, Richard H. Davis; 6. Work and Wealth, Renana Jhabvala; 7. The Business of Bollywood, Manjeet Kripalani; 8. Downloading India: A Guide to Online Resources, Mary Rader; 9. A Chronology, Irawati Parnerkar

Reviews

“The useful eleventh volume of Asia Society’s India Briefing series, edited by Ayres and Oldenburg, provides backing for India’s newfound, and cautious, optimism. The contributors provide an excellent update on the shifting coalitions in India’s party politics and solid analysis of India’s economic reforms.”
Foreign Affairs

“…a substantial analysis and balanced perspective of India–devoid of exaggeration but nourished with substance and blended by the rigours of analysis and sophistication. Indeed, this volume is an excellent rendition of India.”
Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International & Strategic Affairs, Vol.27, #3

“What is of interest is that the editors and contributors address their concerns to the central question of power in the economy, when everything in the world today merges into everything else, politics into economics, economics into sociology and history, and so on.”
Business Standard

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Hardback (ISBN-13: 978-0-7656-0812-3)
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Since 1998, India has held two national elections, begun the second phase of economic reforms, and grown in global stature as the intellectual training ground for Silicon Valley. With their new prominence, Indian Americans are increasingly effecting change in India through their financial and intellectual clout. In another sphere, India now occupies a special place in the literary world as Indian writers in English gain in prominence and numbers. India has also found itself the new ground zero of the next AIDS crisis. And reciprical state visits by President Clinton and India’s Prime Minister Vajpayee have ushered in a new spirit of Indo-U.S. cooperation.

This edition of India Briefing covers these most recent political, economic, social, and cultural developments in India from 1998 through the end of 2000.

Chapter Contents

1. Introduction, Alyssa Ayres; 2. Politics in India’s Decentered Polity, John Echeverri-Gent; 3. The Indian Economy: Pushing Ahead and Pulling Apart, Joydeep Mukherji; 4. From Bangalore to Silicon Valley and Back: How the Indian Diaspora in the United States Is Changing India, Sadanand Dhume; 5. The Subordinate Caste Revolution, Christophe Jaffrelot; 6. The Challenges of India’s Health and Health Care Transitions, Mark Nichter and David Van Sickle; 7. Representing India: Indian Literature on the World Stage, Alok Rai; 8. 1998-2000: A Chronology, Bandita Sijapati

Reviews

“This lucid volume explores the diverse complexities of [the] new and dynamic India. … An easy to use, up-to-date reference volume on most aspects of Indian life.”
Foreign Affairs

“… an excellent resource for anyone with more than a passing interest in India. The contributors are knowlegeable and thorough in their specialties, and the book is packed with detail on the chosen topics.”
Foreign Service Journal

“… a useful addition to the series and will be useful to South Asianists and practitioners.”
Choice

“… a very useful addition to the increasing number of books on the changing political economy of the Indian State. … valuable in understanding the genesis of an emerging India as the country grapples with the newer challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century.”
Contemporary South Asia 12(3)

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Special issue of India Review, Vol. 5, no. 1 (January 2006). 172 pp.

ISSN: 1557-3036 (electronic) 1473-6489 (paper)

Halfway through the first decade of the twenty-first century, interest in India has exploded in the United States in a very public way. In years past, India occupied so marginal a position in the American imagination that Asia meant China, Japan, or occasionally Korea–excluding the whole of India from that continent. By 2005, however, breathless cover stories of news magazines featured India as a rising power second only to China; the business press, it seemed, could not get enough of India and its opportunities for growth; and President Bush and India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a series of agreements that poised India and the United States for a new relationship of strategic partnership.

The transformation in public perception of India in the United States has been welcomed by many scholars who for years had been compelled to argue what precisely India’s relevance was to American, and global, interests. That India’s importance now appears self-evident marks a new phase for India studies in the US. Indeed, taken in its broadest possible sense, the study of India has percolated beyond the narrow confines of academia to include broad public audiences through titles published by major trade presses, as well as public discussions such as those convened by World Affairs Councils in cities throughout the US.

This growing American interest in India comes at a time of shifting India interests in the US academy as well. The essays in this volume represent an effort to understand this changing balance of interests both within academic disciplines, as well as beyond the academy. Even with the palpable upswing in perceptions of and interest in India, however, there is still room for growth. As the chapters in this volume show, while the study of India has in some spheres been growing, in others it has been experiencing a stagnation if not retrenchment in comparison with previous decades. A wide-angle lens on this landscape thus reveals challenges and opportunities in variegated ways.

Chapter Contents

1. Introduction: The State of India Studies in the United States, Sumit Ganguly and Alyssa Ayres; 2. Beyond Disciplines: India Studies in the United States, Alyssa Ayres; 3. Economics, Economists, and the Indian Economy, John Adams; 4. The State of Political Science and Security Studies of India in the United States: Increased Importance but Declining Academic Attention, Arthur Rubinoff; 5. The Study of Indian Religions in the US Academy, Christian Lee Novetzke; 6. The American Anthropology of India, Kelly D. Alley; 7. The Study of Indian History in the US Academy, Benjamin B. Cohen

• Volume contents

Ending weeks of speculation, the White House has announced President Obama’s pick for U.S. Ambassador to India: former Congressman Timothy Roemer. Roemer will bring a fresh approach to the U.S.-India relationship, a global view steeped in national security matters at just the time when our two countries must enhance our security cooperation. He will have a direct line to the White House and to important legislators and policymakers in Washington, the most important element for any envoy’s success.

But above all, he and his family will represent the best of American “Midwestern” values, bringing an earnestness of purpose and an open, inquisitive mind to all he pursues. He’ll ask a lot of questions, listen hard to the answers, and in the process advance what the United States and India can do together.

Pundits are already noting the substantial national security background Roemer will bring to Roosevelt House–the U.S. ambassador’s residence in New Delhi. Currently the president of the Center for National Policy, he served on the 9/11 Commission, and sponsored the legislation that created it in the last of his six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. As a scholar, he has published on the threat radicalization (particularly radical Islam) poses to our world, and criticized the mismatch of our bureaucracies to meet this challenge.

Last fall, in his role as a member of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Roemer nearly boarded a flight to Islamabad where he was to head for the Marriott–but was stopped in his tracks by the suicide attack that killed 54 and wounded 266.

In short: He has legislated, studied and published on the terrorism threat, and he has narrowly missed being in the line of fire. He will bring enormous empathy to the concerns India has long voiced, and lead the way toward a deeper cooperation countering terror.

Of course, the most important requirement for an envoy’s success is having the president’s ear, and he’s got it. He was an early supporter of then-candidate Obama, and campaigned hard for him in his home state of Indiana. (Indiana was a tough and late-voting battleground during last year’s interminable primary). But he’s also got the ear of Vice President Biden, a big supporter of the 9/11 commission’s recommendations. He was a strong supporter of President Clinton and knows Secretary of State Clinton very well. Hometown ties to fellow Indianans Sen. Richard Lugar, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Lee Hamilton, now director of the Wilson Center and a powerful éminence grise on foreign policy after decades in the House, ensure that he can convey his views directly and effectively.

Roemer knows how America’s complicated foreign policy process works, especially the role Capitol Hill plays, and he will be able to translate this sometimes-opaque setup to colleagues and friends in India.

But we would be remiss not to comment on the personal qualities that will make Roemer an outstanding ambassador. One of us has known him personally for nearly two decades, and can say without hesitation that he embodies the best of American decency: humble, diligent, conscientious. He is a centrist Democrat in the Sam Nunn mold, with a record of bipartisanship that underscores his thoughtful manner and ability to find common ground amidst differences.

He has a scholar’s mind for questions–he earned a Ph.D. from Notre Dame–and seeks out different points of view so he can learn. India can expect an American with a fresh point of view, and most importantly, someone ready to understand the country and the aspirations of its citizens as it is today. At this hopeful and indeed pivotal time for U.S.-India relations, these qualities will make him extremely effective.

Thomas F. “Mack” McLarty is chairman of McLarty Associates and served as chief of staff and special envoy for the Americas in the Clinton administration. Alyssa Ayres is director for India and South Asia at McLarty Associates, and directed the Asia Society task force, which recently released “Delivering On The Promise: Advancing US Relations With India.”