Letters: Indo-US relations 2.0

This refers to the editorial "Another step forward" (November 24). The current re-calibration in Indo-US relations is as much a product of the pragmatism of the two incumbent leaders as of a changed global economic dispensation. Three decades of highly inward looking coalition governments had spared our economy, but stymied our external equations with other nations, big and small. We now seem to have discovered the importance of long-term external linkages.

In the past decade, powerful economies like the US, Europe and Russia plunged even as India had enviably advanced. For the next decade or so, the world economy could decisively shift east. That would bring along new political equations as well. Barack Obama's visit to India in January 2015 is surely a vindication of our new-found economic standing but more importantly, it would signal that we are learning long-forgotten lessons in deft and sure-footed realpolitik. The cross of such prolonged inadequacy is still being foisted more on the never-ending coalitions and far less on a diverting fixation we continue to have over a recalcitrant neighbour. This must change, starting with the visit of the US president.

R Narayanan Ghaziabad

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