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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Senor VS who wrote (1176)	5/31/1998 6:39:00 PM
From: Rational	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 12475

Hi Ravi: I felt that Indian PR, especially here, has not been great. In fact, I sent an e-mail to Naresh Chandra suggesting that India create an NRI "think-tank" in US to feed research-based information on India to the misinformed American media and public. I think Pakistanis are doing better than Indians in feeding anti-Indian rhetoric to the American public. Pakistan spends far more than India on foreign trips ($2billion per year according to an article in The News or Dawn), mostly to USA and UK. [Pakistan spends 75% of its budget on foreign interest payments and defense.] The American media generally depends on the US government for their (mis)information on India. I have found the European press (BBC and Times, for example) as more informed and accurate than the American media who try to dramatize the event by completely distorting the truth. Despite the fall-out in the PR, however, a sea-change has taken place everywhere else it matters. The main issue that every Republican senator on TV talk-shows talks about is that the S-E Asian nuclear crisis is a result of a failed Clinton foreign policy: who ignored intelligence information that China, since early 1990s, has infringed the CTBT it signed by supplying nuclear/missile technology to Pakistan that triggered India to do the nuclear tests. Naresh Chandra has been very successfully hitting on this point every time he talks. Of course, Clinton aides have to help his boss to portray India as a bully to deflect public perception of the Chinese deception linked to Clinton's campaign contribution. Republicans are proceeding methodically to impeach the President. Whether or not they succeed, the whole Sino-Pak nexus as a failed American policy will hit hard the American public exactly as India had anticipated, at no cost to India. This media-blitz will be far more authentic than the Pak PR since Americans will seriously tune into their own Senators and Congressmen speaking on American foreign policy failure. India is deliberately dis-engaging with Pakistan because Indian policy is not Pak-centric. India does not want to be compared with Pakistan. True, Pakistan wants parity with India (due the false hope gained from Western powers in the wake of independence) and wants international intervention in resolving Indo-Pak disputes. The sea-change I have noticed is that neither USA, nor UK, nor UN nor any other responsible country would even hint about internationalizing the Kashmir issue or link the issue with current nuclear tests. This is a significant departure from the earlier US policy of annoying India on the Kashmir issue at the flick of every moment. The Simla accord on resolving Kashmir dispute through bilateral peaceful negotiations has been thus accepted, de facto, by all the major powers. What is also reverberating is that USA cannot influence/bully New Delhi and that Americans can only request India and Pakistan to negotiate. This is a significant recognition of India's geo-strategic role. Actually, this recognition stemmed from the Reagan-Gandhi summit. Subsequently, Bush penalized Pakistan heavily. Republicans are angry about the change in that policy due to Clinton not checking China in transferring nuclear/missile technology to Pakistan and Iran. In any case, India could/should have done more by fighting for a relay of true information to American public via these talk shows. Observe, though, that mostly Indian and Pakistani Americans are tuned into debates on SE Asia; while other Americans tune into sitcoms. My best, Rational