India gives hope for the future

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India gives hope for the future

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8583899

%255E25377,00.html

February 05, 2004

INDIA'S Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was meant to be in

Australia this week. The trip had reached an advanced stage of

planning with precise dates and itineraries worked out. It would

have been the first trip to Australia by an Indian prime minister --

who represents about 20 per cent of the human race -- in many years

but it was cancelled at the last minute.

 

But Vajpayee's trip was cancelled for the most excellent reason. For

this week he announced the dissolving of the Indian parliament with

national elections to follow as soon as possible. Vajpayee wants the

trip to be rescheduled for as soon after the elections as possible.

 

The polls put him miles ahead and while no democratic election is

entirely predictable, he is at very short odds to win - and win big.

This is all remarkable in itself. But more than that, it is strongly

in Australia's interests that Vajpayee should win and come to

Australia. For his trip, unlike most heads-of-government visits,

could be historic for Australia.

 

India will be the next Asian superpower and Australia stands on the

cusp of making a connection with India, of a type it has never

forged before. It is too simplistic to say that India will be the

next China but the comparison is compelling -- with the huge

difference that India is an exemplary parliamentary democracy which

shares our deepest civic values.

 

This is a historic moment for Australian-Indian relations. This year

India will enter the top 10 of our export markets. For the past 15

years the Indian economy has grown, on average, by just under 6 per

cent a year. With more than a billion people, India is the second-

largest nation in the world. Its population is predicted to

stabilise by 2050 at something like 1.8 billion. Half its people are

less than 25 so for the next two decades huge numbers of Indians

will join the work force and economic growth could well go into

overdrive. India could easily end up the third largest economy in

the world.

 

Yet up to now, despite the astonishingly widespread Indian love of

cricket, the civilian and official contacts between Australia and

India have lacked the depth and volume to sustain the sort of deep

strategic engagement which could benefit both nations. But this is

changing rapidly. There are more than 10,000 Indian students in

Australia, a number set to soar. India is, after Britain, our second-

largest source of skilled migrants and will soon displace Britain on

that score.

 

THERE are about 150,000 Australians of Indian descent, who will help

give the relationship a domestic-political charge. And Indian

migrants are fantastically successful. In the US, they are the

single most successful immigrant group, with a per capita income

twice that of the US average.

 

India is increasingly assertive diplomatically. The huge historic

shift in the tectonic plates of the world's geo-strategic equations

was India's de facto realignment with the US. But it is an

increasingly important player in all diplomatic equations. It has,

for example, transformed its relationship with Israel. This has led

to intimate defence co-operation between the two nations. They are

also working together closely in combatting Islamist terrorism. A

few months ago Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited India.

 

The recalibration of the relationship with Israel is almost as

revolutionary as the turn towards the US. It involved India ditching

a key part of decades worth of Non-Aligned Movement rhetoric and

spurious Third World solidarity. It also aroused a great deal of

hostility among India's Arab friends. Egypt was especially vocal in

its criticisms of India. But in the end India would not be deterred.

It stood its ground. Like China, it's big enough to defy much

international opinion and effectively force others to accommodate

its decisions. Needless to say, India's embrace of Israel has been

an immensely important diplomatic coup for Jerusalem.

 

I first met India's redoubtable Prime Minister, Vajpayee, in 1995,

when he was Opposition Leader and not widely expected to become

prime minister. He struck me then as a warm, avuncular figure; a man

of charm and personal generosity, happy, in those less hectic days,

to share his time with a visiting journalist from a land far away

about which he knew little. Rather astonishingly he has achieved a

national stature greater than any Indian leader since Indira Gandhi.

 

I've spent the past week in New Delhi and it's great to be in a

society that feels good about itself and is full of optimism. The

nation's leading news magazine, India Today, headlined a recent

cover story The Feel Good Factor. The slogan on everyone's lips is

India Shining, from movies to books to the prodigiously successful

IT sector. Of course, it goes without saying that India's problems

remain legion. But there is a beat about India, much like Australia,

of growing self-confidence. This is a place that believes it owns a

lot of the future.