A peck on the cheek

For the last several years India and the US, like two uncertain suitors, have been slowly "discovering" each other. Since the Bush administration came to power five years ago, the wooing has been at an accelerated pace.

For reasons of its own, the US has found India worth courting more assiduously now than earlier. India, on its part, has been in a swooning mode, as any long- shelved maiden would be on being paid some attention.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit has resulted in a quick peck on the cheek by the US, which has indicated its willingness to take India out of the nuclear doghouse to which it had been consigned after the first set of tests in 1974.

India has agreed to place its reactors under IAEA safeguards. It is not known yet if India has secretly agreed not to go ahead with the Iran gas pipeline as a quid pro quo.

It is unlikely that the US would not have extracted its pound of flesh, especially now that the new Iranian president is a virulently anti-US leader.

So what will actually emerge from the visit will be known only in the fullness of time because these things take long to reach fruition, and even when they do, they happen in dribs and drabs.

The outcome of the visit shows that the fundamental requirements of the two countries have not changed. India wants several things but the three most important are a freer flow of new technologies, to be treated as a major player rather than as a country with a walk-on part, and, of course, assurances about Pakistan and terrorism.

It had wanted the second of these to be instrumentalised via a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. But the US was never willing to consider India ahead of Japan.

Nor was it willing to annoy China, which has clearly expressed its opposition to India becoming a permanent member.

The choice of Shirin Tahir-Kheli, an American of Pakistani origin, to handle UN reforms was a clear indication of US intentions.

So India, deciding that discretion is the better part of valour, took the issue off the agenda for this visit. This was quite clever because, in the end, it really makes very little difference whether or not a country has the veto.

The US, in turn, as befits an imperial power, has wanted explicit guarantees from India that it will cooperate fully by falling in line over its nuclear non-proliferation agenda.

This has now been done. That leaves the other half of the story: economic cooperation. This will mainly be in the form of opening up Indian markets to American services, mainly financial ones.

This has been a foregone conclusion for some time and is no longer a matter of high policy. But the speed with which the outcomes are achieved is critical.

This is where Dr Singh's domestic constraints become important because the future course does not depend on personal equations between the leaderships.

Instead, it is the speed with which US firms can come in and make money here that will decide it. India is still seen as sclerotic and confused.

Given the company he keeps at home, it is unlikely that Dr Singh would have been able to dispel this view.