Yes, he still can

Obama has to touch hearts, in the US and in India

For months it was expected that the Democratic Party in the United States would fare poorly in this week’s elections to the US Congress. Indeed, it has been long remarked that President Barack Obama timed his travel to Asian democracies to, in fact, get away from the expected bad news. It is also clear that with these elections in mind, and given the complete focus at home on domestic economic issues, President Obama has been demanding that emerging economies like China and India ought to do more for the US and be willing to take a knock from reduced outsourcing of jobs. All this is well taken. The silver lining is, of course, that the democrats have actually done better than expected. They have managed to retain control of the US Senate. If Mr Obama is able to touch American hearts, and not just win minds, he can still comeback for a second term. The results will, however, keep him focused on the domestic economic situation. For that reason, he will expect to hear some good news in India about what India can do to help create jobs for Americans. That will be the thrust of his business-to-business interactions. By announcing the lifting of high-tech export controls, Mr Obama can help US companies sell more to India and create jobs at home.

In his people-to-people interactions, Mr Obama can be expected to focus on “shared values” — like democracy, pluralism, secularism — and the strong bond between urban India and US civil society. It is at the government-to-government level that there will be some hard bargaining. Mr Obama only repeated the standard US formulation on India’s membership of the UN security council when he allowed his aides to answer written questions. If he wants to say something new on this subject, he would prefer to use the occasion of his address to Parliament. His aides would want him to get a bigger ovation and more hand-holding from India’s lawmakers than what former US President Bill Clinton got. On the most important issue that he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are going to discuss — the AfPak problem — there may be a greater meeting of minds than most imagine, given that Dr Singh has an impressive track record of “out of the box” thinking on national security issues. The bottom line for the Obama visit, however, will be to see if he strikes the same emotional chord with India’s opinion-making and opinionated middle class as his two immediate predecessors did. To achieve that, Mr Obama has to be less of what he has been so far, and more of what he should become — less cerebral and more intuitive. This will, in fact, help revive his own political fortunes at home and relations with India.