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Nine years ago, a freshly-elected UPA government under the leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh began its first term by drafting the framework for the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement - a deal seen by many to have reinvigorated bilateral ties between the world's two largest democracies.
Around the same time in 2005, in a lesser talked about, but equally significant visit, former Prime Minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi also travelled to New Delhi. He was the first Japanese leader to visit India in more than half a decade, kick-starting an era of hectic bilateral engagement between the two countries.
The common year for India's engagement with both Japan and the US though was 2000 -- the dawn of the new millennium. It was the year during which Bill Clinton visited India and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori made a trip to New Delhi despite strong advise from the latter's foreign office and political advisers against making overtures in the backdrop of the nuclear tests India had conducted.
Fourteen years later, as India prepares for polls and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gets ready to pass on the baton, ties with both these strategic partners has been stretched in two diametrically opposite directions. While the much acclaimed 'special' friendship with the US has hit rock bottom, the less publicised partnership with Japan has only gone from strength to strength.
The diplomatic row concerning consular officer Devayani Khobragade is the latest, if not the most serious hitch in Indo-US ties. But foreign policy experts provide a string of reasons that have contributed to shaking up the foundations of this once solid partnership. Among them are: India's nuclear liability law that's proved to be a major roadblock in implementing the N-Deal, concerns regarding US's perceived anti-outsourcing stance, Corporate America's unease about India's protectionist trade policies and Obama administration's lack of enthusiasm in vigorously pursuing the India relationship as it battles domestic problems and crises in the middle-east.
“The current Administration has been doing just enough in its dealings with India to avoid looking complacent,” Sadanand Dhume, South Asia Expert was quoted as saying in the TIME Magazine recently. The India file no longer goes to the White House, Pramit Pal Chaudhury HT's foreign affairs editor told a TV channel recently, summing up pithily how ties between the two countries have plummeted.
While this deterioration in ties could be frustrating Singh, whose biggest contribution as Prime Minister has been the signing of the nuclear accord -- a deal hailed by him as the 'best moment' in his tenure -- he could certainly drink to the other less-celebrated partnership that's being touted as a major success story under UPA 2 -- the budding Indo-Japan ties described by the Indian PM as being "at the heart of our Look East Policy".
"If Indo-US ties were the showpiece of Dr Singh's first term, the deepening of ties with Japan has been the highlight and, if I may say, the only significant foreign policy achievement of UPA 2," former diplomat Lalit Mansingh told Business Standard.
As K Shankar Bajpai, former Ambassador & Secretary at the Ministry of External Affairs Ministry, notes in his Op-Ed in the Hindu how within two months we've had Their Imperial Majesties of Japan, the Defence Minister, and now, the Premier - Shinzo Abe visiting India, signifying the importance Japan attaches to this relationship. Abe attended the Republic Day celebrations as chief guest, an honour purportedly reserved only for India's closest allies, skipping one of the opening days of the Diet, where the Prime Minister and his Ministers are supposed to be in attendance by custom.
Eight agreements pledging infrastructure loans worth 200 billion yen have been signed between India and Japan who have also agreed to boost defense ties -- a move seen as providing a counterweight to China in the Asia-Pac region. These weekend announcements follow several other steps in the recent past, including the expansion of the bilateral currency swap arrangement to $50 billion from $15 billion, the ongoing partnership on the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor and hosting of annual summits to enable B2B engagements of Japanese and Indian companies.
US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz's planned visit to India meanwhile, has been postponed as tensions between New Delhi and Washington over the treatment Khobragade simmer, with India adopting tit-for-tat diplomacy, withdrawing VIP facilities to American diplomats and expelling one officer.
With these tensions refusing to die down, and with an emergent BJP that's deeply skeptical about the N-Deal and known for holding a grouse against the US over Narendra Modi's visa expected to form the next government, will Indo-US relations take a backseat, even as Indo-Japanese ties define the course of India's foreign policy?
G Parthasarthy, a former diplomat lauds the "transformation of Indo-Japan ties from deep distrust to major strategic partnership" but warns that there are great chances of India going down the dustbin of international relations if it cannot define its relationship with the US and its role in the world by undertaking important economic initiatives.
"With the US foreign policy likely to be significantly altered in the years to come due to the discovery of shale gas, our relationship with them will have to be re-fashioned. one of the ways to do that would be by defining the contours of the Trans Pacific Partnership where US is keen to include us, but we aren't being cajoled easily. As far as Modi goes, Americans are supreme realists, they've had a love affair even with Chairman Mao, so they'll come calling with folded arms."
"These are two completely different baskets, but not in contradiction with one another," adds Mansingh when asked whether Japan's closeness to India will overshadow our relationship with the US. "Yes we've had a setback with the US, but it will have to be revived as there are too many common interests at stake for us to neglect each other. Japan is emerging perhaps as our most important ally in the Asia-Pac region if China were to appear to be a military threat. The US too is rebalancing its Asia-Pac policies to contain China. All of these developments will have huge geo-political ramifications in the next 10 years."
A trilateral pact involving New Delhi, Tokyo and Washington then seems to be in India's best interests.
