India's Rediff.com known to create waves and inform the visitors to the website about what really important is happening has another scoop to its credit. It has divulged the talking points of the Indian Prime Minister on the eve of Obama's visit to India. These points make very interesting reading and pertain to the US-India relations viz-a-viz Pakistan and Afghanistan, the issue of defence, counter-terrorism and intelligence sharing, cyber-security, hi-end technology, nuclear trade and proliferation security initiative.
In fact, these relate to geo-politics and technology alone. We would concentrate on India's quest for technology and the importance it has for the future of any country. Additionally, it is also important that we discuss each and every facet of the four of the above wish list that constitute the tangible part of the above aspirations. More so, when the US President's visit, according to analysts, has been a great success.
How can cyber security be assured. Surely, the first step is to achieve full insight into the world of IT and allied fields and then create the barricades necessary along with the fire walls ensuring impregnable defences. In other words, the defence team has to be
extremely proficient in the science of informational technology. India, thus wishes to have access to all that is and would be happening in the field - specially in the US and also into the field of creating defences thereof. Coming to what is billed as high-end technology, we see that it takes us to the fields of post-space age metallurgy, super materials, nano-technology, miniaturisation, centrifuges that defy all laws of motion and circuits that can be taken as speaks of dirt for all that matters. In simple words, access to high-end technology is the mantra for today and tomorrow. Rather, it is the requirement for any developing country that aspires to join the club of developed nations in the shortest possible time. It, in fact, is the only way to leap-frog and somehow reduce the catching-up period that is necessary to achieve any meaningful development.
We then come to the point relating to nuclear trade. India wishes to discuss remedial measures that may allay the fears of the US Industry over the Nuclear Civil liability Bill that bars opening up technologies to the world that can be misused. And once all the fears are allayed, India can rightly claim access to the technologies that so far allude her. She looks forward to co-operation with the US in all matters pertaining to civilian nuclear use in future and in particular co-operation on nuclear safety and security issues, in assisting new entrants to civil nuclear power club managing their respective nuclear programmes' safety. She, thus, wishes to be treated as an equal partner to the US in managing future global civil nuclear programmes.
All the above translates into the fact that India will become proficient in nuclear technology and then earn money by exporting technology on her own. Surely, another important step to gain economic strength in the medium to long-term. This wish allows us to look deep into the Indian mindset. It is crystal clear that this country is using its geo-political muscle to gain economically. And that hi-tech trade or value-added products is its eventual goal. In this quest, India is vying with China and others to gain foothold in the African continent where natural resources may be still available for grabs.
Lastly, we would talk about India's wish to be part of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) propagated by the US and then police our part of the world, specially the seas around us. She wishes to monitor ships and assure that nothing unwarranted is being transported anywhere. This aspiration also takes India to new technologies, that would further her ambitions to gain economic strength.
Why is India wishing for access to technology in a big way, while others may not be in line with this thinking? Why is it so that she has not sought any of the easily available benefits? A little insight reveals that India is all three of the prerequisites with a view to converting the country into a developed country on a fast track. These are human resources development, access to technologies and lastly the availability of a modern infrastructure. In a way, all the above technology part of Singh's wish list makes very good economic sense and also gives us an insight into our neighbour's psychology.
Interestingly, Obama visited India to cement business deals to create jobs back home, while India has sights on the available technologies that the US can offer. It would be extremely revealing to know about the results of this joust - as to how countries look after their respective interests - economic and political. We must co-relate the dividends of access to technology India harks for and the economic well-being that it heralds in the end. Probably, the right way for Pakistan would be to also look towards the same way of doing things instead of just going for some access to trade and emergency aid.
Actually, long-term economics should be the goal that may eventually build-up the strategic alliance with the developed world. However, in case of Pakistan this may be concentrated in the fields of agriculture and agro-based industry energy, mining of special materials (such as those available in the Balochistan), human resource development and export and information technology. Incidentally, Pakistan started in a big way, but seems to have left the last of above fields to a small group of private entrepreneurs who unfortunately may not be able to make an appreciable dent in the international trade in IT services.