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The Clinton visit is over. It is time now to cut the hype and assess what it has actually achieved for us.

First of all, it appears to have corrected the tilt that American foreign policy always had towards Pakistan. President Clinton has correctly understood that American interests will be better served in the future if he gave precedence to India over Pakistan and that is precisely what this visit did. Directly, unequivocally.

Clinton made not the slightest attempt to be even handed. He spent much more time in India than he did in Pakistan. He brought a team of NRIs with him, to focus on the importance of Indian entrepreneurs in the success story of the new American economy. He met and addressed a variety of groups in India, not just politicians as he did during his short visit to Islamabad. In fact, for all practical purposes, he relegated Pakistan to the status of Bangladesh and went out of his way to befriend India.

True, we do not yet have the MFN status that China enjoys. Also true, it could take us another five years to catch up with China as far as FDI inflows from the US go. But these are not really important issues.

What is important is that the ice has been broken and India enters the ICE age as a friend and partner of the world's strongest democracy. As a nation that Clinton went out of his way to describe as one of the most powerful economies of the future, driven not by its traditional strengths in agriculture and cheap industrial labour but by its skills in value addition, its intellect and innovation.

We could not have asked for a better certificate.

The Cold War days are over. India no longer needs to choose between America and Russia. Just as America no longer needs to choose between Pakistan and India or, for that matter, between India and China. We can all live together in a world bonded more by economic compulsions than military needs. Clinton has reiterated that again and again during his visit.

Before us, in Parliament, his language was strong and passionate, yet tempered by caution for he knows how prickly we Indians are when foreigners come calling to tell us what we should be doing. In informal meetings and before the business community, he was more direct, more forthright. However, the point he made was the same: It is time to get on with the real things in life and stop playing war games like spoilt kids.

While this may sound condescending, it is a perfectly valid point. Both India and Pakistan have lost valuable time and opportunity chasing the phantoms of hate. It may have benefited the political leaders of both nations and given us, in a perverse way, a sense of national identity and self-esteem. But, in the long run, this ugly miasma of rage and bigotry can only destroy us. For the future lies with those who fight poverty and destitution, not those who pick up squabbles with their neighbours.

The world has already reached a stage where every third person is a refugee. It is foolish and futile to make things worse than they already are. If we cannot produce more people like Mahatma Gandhi, or say Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama, let us at least stop producing people like Osama bin Laden who have nothing to offer the world but hate and savagery in the name of religion.

Whatever our faith may be, let us realise the simple fact that anger can never build nations, it can only destroy whatever we already have. Pakistan with its undermined political system and basket economy loses nothing even if it loses a war with India whereas India has everything to lose, poised as it is at the brink of a new destiny, even when it wins a war with Pakistan.

The Sangh Parivar may not realise this simple truth, but Vajpayee does. That is why he appears more and more keen to settle issues and put our relationship back on the rails. He does not say so openly, given the fact that he does not know how the new leadership in Pakistan (with its army at the helm) would react to such an approach. He is also concerned, I would imagine, with what the hawks within his own party and its allies would say if he were to send out an olive branch to a despised neighbour who only recently provoked an unnecessary and brutal war at the border resulting in the death of thousands of young soldiers.

But Clinton appears to have sensed this. That is why he went out of his way to create the right atmosphere for Vajpayee to take a slightly more flexible position. At the same time, he warned Pakistan to fall in line or face the consequences. He was not soft and gentle and appeasing, as he was in India. In fact, he was not even cautious. The mask dropped. He made his points as strongly and directly as American presidents are known to. The message was absolutely clear. Clinton was ready to dump the military government in Islamabad and inch closer to its natural ally.

It is time we took advantage of the opportunity this offers us. To forget the past and redesign the future in a manner that best suits our interests. Not our perceived political interests. These have always let us down. We need to now focus on our commercial interests. Clever and prosperous as many of us are, it is time we recognised the fact that no nation can progress with almost half its population struggling to survive under the bread line.

Poverty and distress invariably holds a nation back from realising its true potential and it is important for India to realize this. It is time stopped playing cheer leader to the third world and focussed on how to fight back the desperate poverty and backwardness of our own people in the villages of India. They do not need slogans any more. They need jobs and opportunities.

Making friends with America could allow us that. It could allow us to see the future as a free people. Free from ideology. Free from backwardness. Free from the shackles of poverty that 52 years of socialist rhetoric brought us.

America, on the other hand, must learn to respect our free spirit. The fact that we have enshrined democracy in its truest form in India. We may hate Laloo. We may call him a dirty, rotten crook. But if the people of Bihar want him back, we bow before their wishes. That is the essence of Indian democracy. We are not Pakistan. We are a free and proud nation. We do not bootlick our benefactors. We respect them. We have the spine to stand up to them and even criticize them. That is India for you, like it or not. And America needs to realise that it is better to have a self respecting ally than a creepy, crawly at your beck and call.

There were many boo-boos during the visit. But that was not Clinton's fault. That was the fault of having intermediaries who see this great nation through the eyes of party animals and social climbers. These foreign service guys are so arrogant and illiterate that they have never made an attempt to cut through the gloss and the sham and recognise what real India is all about. They are the ones who keep the real America and the real India, who have so much in common, so far away from each other.

One only wishes that whoever succeeds Clinton sends to India someone like Chester Bowles or John Kenneth Galbraith. For only people of that calibre can take India-US relations to a new level. Carpetbaggers cannot achieve that.

Pritish Nandy

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