Figuring out how Washington works is not rocket science, yet Indians who deal with it repeatedly flounder on its shoals. They are unable to make it work for them. Be it official India, sundry political party reps or the creamy-layer businessmen and their associations – no one has a clear handle on it. They organize badly, don’t keep an ear to the ground, have no links to the US media to speak of and are too busy feeding Indian media channels even when abroad. It should be no surprise that the India story gets told largely the way the American establishment wants it told.
The latest example of how India fails was the visit of BJP President Rajnath Singh. He spoke at a badly organized conference on Afghanistan, got mired in Narendra Modi’s visa controversy and when confronted, proceeded to employ the old but now-expired Indian rope trick – being too clever by half. Brajesh Mishra would have held his head watching this embarrassment on foreign soil. It was a true #Facepalm in Twitterese.
As an Indian abroad, I find it painful to watch my countrymen and women fail the easy tests. The failure cuts across party lines. If you have BJP leaders who should read their speeches in Hindi with simultaneous translation rather than in English, you have Congress Party leaders whose pomposity can give you nausea.
At the Afghanistan conference where Rajnath Singh spoke, a senior US researcher confided to me about meeting an important UPA minister on a recent trip who barely bothered to engage the US delegation and told them to “Google him.” Your guess about the minister’s identity is as good as mine. Hint: his ambitions have only grown with time.
Back to the question: Why do we fail to work the levers of this town effectively?
Quick answers: Indian Americans need a sophisticated operation such as a think tank that supports their ambitions and aspirations. The Indian Embassy needs to think differently and Indian ambassadors need to spot young talent and potential leaders instead of feting the same old, has-beens and never-were(s), so-called Indian American leaders. And collecting Twitter followers is not really diplomacy when you come down to it.
Indian Americans with all their money and influence should be able to fund a non-partisan think tank in Washington, which does genuine research and engages the American government and society in a serious manner. This means going beyond smart operators who pretend to represent the community but are actually in it for their own financial gain. One such was involved in Rajnath Singh’s trip.
Lobbying the US government is a perfectly acceptable political activity in Washington but you have to get the right people. It took the Indian Embassy and the Ministry of External Affairs an inordinately long time to accept that they needed a lobbyist. Indian diplomats saw it as an invasion of their domain and an affront to their abilities. It was only in the 1990s that the government of India felt it was necessary to hire US professionals to help them in their goals. Thankfully we crossed that frontier.
The Indian American community needs to cross one too. It must establish a permanent presence in Washington. At the same time it should nurture a set of young ones who will speak to power and articulate the issues that concern the community, and India. To some, the two may not be related, but the community and official India both need each other to further their interests. Each gives the other the leverage that often doesn’t get recognized.
Let’s face it – the Indian American community gets a lot of respect not only because of its achievements but also because of its linkage with India. The younger Indian Americans may not feel the connection as strongly but that is where official India needs to step in. It must keep the connection alive or lose it in a salad bowl of integration.
There is no question the Indian Americans have done well in this society, rising fast and furiously through the ranks. The next step is to translate that into real power as other immigrant groups have done. This is where the mother country can help – if it wants to keep the links alive. Obviously, India would benefit more from the connection. But for that Indian ambassadors have to be imaginative.
It saddens me to see that inputs into US policy on India from the outside still come largely from the old set of academics and former US ambassadors who cut their teeth on policy in the bad old days when India and the United States barely saw eye to eye on anything. They have their old prejudices and peddle them relentlessly. The prejudices are mainly pro-Pakistan formed in the days when India didn’t think it fit to entertain US academics. To its detriment, I might add.
Slowly but surely, young Indian Americans are making their presence felt in the policy circles and challenging former ambassadors but they need more support than they are getting. From the community and from official India. Indian diplomats tend to disregard young Indian Americans simply because they don’t have grey hair and may be because they are women. This is plain stupid.
For all this to happen, we need a plan. India, sadly, has shown no evidence of one.
