India and US

[Guest guest]

President, Chicago Council of Foreign Relations

 

 

`I don't think it serves our purpose to blame Musharraf or humiliate

him'

 

 

Marshall M. Bouton, academic, policy wonk and India-hand, has been

coming to this country long before it became fashionable to do so

 

 

ASHOK MALIK

 

 

 

India, they say, is the flavour of the season in the United States.

This week, New Delhi played host to someone who was an Indophile

well before it became the fashion. Marshall M. Bouton arrived for a

visit, ``probably my 70th'', to a land that defines him about as

much as his native New York does.

 

He came, of course, as president of the Chicago Council of Foreign

Relations, formidable India hand, well-networked on the Hill and,

most recently, co-author of a task force report on the American

engagement of South Asia, particularly India and Pakistan.

 

The CV wasn't always this impressive. Bouton was drawn to India

by ``accident''. ``I had taken a course on India in my senior year

at college (Harvard),'' he recalls, ``not by choice but because it

was the only course available in the time slot to fulfil a

requirement in non-western history.''

 

Instant karma or destiny's long shot — the Marshall plan for India

was underway. Two years later, Bouton was living in a village in

Tamil Nadu, working with a Quaker voluntary organisation between

1964-66. As he says, ``I got hooked.''

 

On his way to a PhD, Bouton eventually did a dissertation on

the ``agrarian transformation in south India that began with the

Green Revolution''. Researching in Thanjavur, he interrogated

stereotype: ``There was this whole question of why India had not had

a peasant revolution. Unlike China, unlike Vietnam, unlike

Algeria... There was talk of the Green Revolution turning Red.''

 

It was another age, almost another universe. India and the US were

still trapped by the Cold War.

 

As vice-president of the Asia Society some years ago, Bouton

commissioned academic-politician Jairam Ramesh to write a paper on

Indian perceptions of America. Its title, ``Yankee go home, but take

me with you'' about summed up a duality that saw America as a land

of opportunity but was yet sceptical. Is this now history?

 

To Bouton, ``If you talk about US polices towards India, there's a

sense that what was an endemic, structural tilt towards Pakistan has

changed. Kargil was remarkable because for the first time we seemed

to tilt towards India.''

 

Even so, travelling the ``backroads of Tamil Nadu and Kerala'' with

his family earlier this winter, Bouton found a ``different kind of

negativism about the United States, related to the Bush

administration's policies vis-a-vis Iraq''

 

Whatever the effect of unilateralism on bilateralism, Bouton

argues, ``The Indo-US relationship has to walk on two legs. It's

built up muscle on the political-security leg but the economic leg,

while functional, is still weak.''

 

Bouton has seen India evolve from a nation that sought American

grain to one that seeks American jobs. He isn't awed by the

outsourcing backlash: ``There'll be lot of hot air and rhetoric and

crazy proposals and crazier legislation. But it will blow over.''

 

 

Bouton has met Indians for 40 years. Do they talk less about

Pakistan than they used to? ``Not much less,'' he says wryly, ``a

little less.'' Yet Bouton is the sort of American you should talk to

about Pakistan. He was part of a task force co-chaired by Frank

Wisner, former US ambassador to India, and Nicholas Platt, former US

ambassador to Pakistan, on America's engagement of this part of the

world.

 

``We wanted to take a longer term view,'' Bouton explains, ``given

the new realities created by 9/11, what should be the objectives of

US policy towards south Asia say 10 years down the road.''

 

``Specifically with respect to Pakistan,'' Bouton says, ``the report

expressed concern about the medium to longer term outlook — unless,

in addition to dealing with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the Pakistan

government also began a process of creating a new political space,

of dealing with the socio-economic problems that have provided

fertile ground to the jihadis.''

 

In sum, Pakistan has to de-program and reboot.

 

Yet is General Pervez Musharraf the sole, even irreplaceable tool

for this ``internal change''? Whether it's the issue of the Taliban

regrouping or nuclear proliferation, why is Musharraf America's

Teflon man? Why is it always somebody else's fault?

 

Bouton is resolute, ``I think we're putting a lot of pressure on

Musharraf. The question is whether it serves our purpose to publicly

blame Musharraf or humiliate him. I don't think it does.''

 

In the gradual conversion of the LoC in Kashmir into some sort of

international border, too, Bouton sees Musharraf as being the key.

He believes there is a ``fatigue'' among Pakistani's middle classes

on the Kashmir front and that they would ``be open to a settlement

that has a degree of real and perceived honour to it.'' His feedback

is ``Musharraf could be bold without being rash and reach a

settlement that gets support from the Pakistani public.''

 

Ah, there's that final attribute to Marshal Bouton we didn't reveal.

He's an incorrigible optimist.