31 July, 2010

India should not get its hopes too high about British Prime Minister David Cameron’s remarkably candid indictment of Pakistan as a country that supports terrorism, and his hectoring our truculent neighbour that it can’t have it “both ways on terrorism”, and needs to dismantle the shadowy Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). A lot of the reason for Mr Cameron’s charming candour was that on this trip, he wasn’t scheduled to visit Pakistan, and played to the Indian gallery.
Making winning statements has been the trump card of his triumphant tour to Turkey and India. In both countries, he unabashedly ‘spoke his mind’, rather than in measured diplomatic statements. In fact, if his statements in India sounded radical, Mr Cameron in Turkey was no less than revolutionary. In Ankara, he called Gaza a “prison camp”. In a Turkey that is fresh from the flotilla fracas with Israel followed by the sudden, steep and swift decline of Turkish-Israeli relations, it seemed almost like demagoguery, especially considering that he neglected (forgot?) to add the customary condemnation of Hamas.
That was not all. He went on to strongly support Turkey’s entry to the European Union (EU), criticised other European countries for delaying its EU application, and said that it sends the wrong message to keep a country out because of its religion. The fact is that most EU members opposed to its entry are worried less about religion than the expected huge influx of Turkish workers into their countries.
Mr Cameron’s tour is basically a sales trip. In terms of business, the UK has been losing ground in India to the US. India is keen to encourage foreign direct investment (FDI) in areas like infrastructure, but Mr Cameron’s mission was to persuade our leaders to lower barriers for the service sector. The British are looking forward, for example, to a change in regulations allowing overseas law firms to set up offices in India, and in the opening up of the retail and finance sectors, especially Insurance and Banking.
The British Prime Minister candidly admits that there is a strong commercial angle to his foreign policy. Whether he has succeeded in his mission and to what extent we will know only in the weeks and months to come. But make no mistake, his explosive political statements were mostly window dressing; small talk before the big sales pitch.
Of course, there can be no lightning without thunder. In a rather direct fallout, Pakistan has ‘postponed’ President Asif Ali Zardari’s visit to Britain, and announced that he will visit France instead. It has also threatened that it may consider ending its sharing of intelligence with the British. But even before these thunderclaps fell, Mr Cameron had already tempered his criticism of Pakistan as he left India. Having set a goal of doubling trade between the two countries in five years, he pointed out that it was necessary to be “fair” about Pakistan’s efforts to fight extremism.
So, is it Britain’s new government’s new foreign policy to travel to a country and insult its unfriendly neighbour? Not really. For, Mr Cameron does not lack expert advice. The same senior civil servants who briefed his predecessor accompanied him on this tour. It seems, rather, that Britain new government is trying to loosen up the country’s traditionally stiff upper lip, but experiencing early hiccups.
Vailankanni ahoy
It is extremely considerate of the Indian Railways to arrange five special trains from Vasco to Nagapattinam and back to enable the faithful to travel more easily to observe the Feast of Our Lady of Good Health, which starts on 29 August and ends on 9 September. The special trains will enable devotees to reach Nagapattinam directly, instead of changing trains twice or enduring a long drive by road.