Meetings with Big Wigs

Reporting from Delhi

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I'm embarrassed to admit that I missed a bit of the Delhi experience today while working on my final. I spent the morning holed up in my room and then returned afterward to finish it. The upside is that I did get it done in time and that it was pretty good (at least I think so.) All the worlds problems solved in 20 pages, not bad!

That said, the day was amazing even without dumpster diving through the markets. Our first meeting was with no one less than the Indian Minister of Defense Shri (Mr.) A.K. Antony. En route to India's equivalent of the Pentagon, Alicia (another Mid-Career who for the British MOD) and I brought our fellow travelers up to speed on Indian Defense issues. Once there we had a remarkably easy time getting into the meeting, without even having to show ID. We simply wrote down some information and a guide took us to the conference room. No searching, no detectors... Even active duty military has to show 2 forms of ID to get into the Pentagon...

The meeting went well, if a bit tense a times. The Minister didn't give a presentation, but preferred that the conversation be "informal". Of course, most of the questions were polite, if mildly probing. A question of corruption seemed to make the minister slightly uncomfortable, but he addressed it with the cool of a professional politician, saying that it exists, but is not as prevalent as some might think. In a free state the bad is always exaggerated by the press.

On defense issues, we discussed the Pakistan issue a bit and the minister maintained the relatively moderate position that he portrays in the press. He is clearly a critic of the US's role in supporting what he sees as a failing regime, but was hopeful for change with the next administration. He also repeated India's pledge not to be a nuclear aggressor, but didn't get into recent developments in their Nuclear Triad or seeking First Strike capabilities.

For the most part, the conversation focused on India's role in the global security environment. For this, the minister gave an answer that disappointed me personally, but is typical of a country that led the Non-Aligned Movement during the cold war and continues to participate to the detriment of global cooperation: India is not interested in global issues beyond it's own "neighborhood". I'm not going to opine on this here, but if you ever want to get me riled up, please ask me to explain why this is one of the weakest excuses for foreign policy that a supposed up and coming nation can cling to.

(pause, calm down)

Our next meeting was with Mr. Naresh Dayal, the Secretary of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. Essentially he holds a position similar to the Undersecretary of the HHS in the US. We had a great conversation with him and his deputies regarding improvements in rural healthcare over the past few years, especially neonatal and infants. India is still behind in meeting the Millennium Development Goals set out by UN, but is making progress. In a few of the states it has exceeded infant and maternal mortality rates, others are lagging behind drastically. They are optimistic, but a number of us were concerned that the recent successes were buoyed by the economic upturn and may not be sustainable as the market goes south. (See the interesting article I mentioned when I first arrived in India.) We had a lot of questions for the Secretary and very little time, so we left unsatiated....

Last meeting was with another Cabinet Minister (hmm... to ministers in one day, whatever...) this time from Commerce. Shri Kamal Nath was one of the primary players in the Doha round of the WTO and its subsequent failure. Naturally, that's what we talked about! He maintained that his primary reason for bringing the negotiations to a standstill was to defend the subsistence farmers of India who do not have a social safety net and cannot survive in a market flooded by subsidized American goods.

Now, I agree that the American trade delegation did not have the best stance on this (read: they were overly self-servicing and protectionist and generally made the same diplomatic mistakes that the Bush administration has been infamous for over the past 8 years.) That said, it is unfair for India to diminish its role in maintaining a distortive global trade regime. As India grows as an economic superpower it will have to make domestic concessions (as will the US), which will ultimately improve every one's quality of life.

I apologize for my going on forever here, but it's difficult to summarize in a few paragraphs meeting with people with such heavy responsibilities. Remember that they have to take care of a population nearly 4 times that of the US with an economy less than one tenth the size and a tax revenue that doesn't even compare. I don't envy their jobs and hope that they continue to make that positive improvements in their people's lives that we've seen over the past decade.

Group with the Minister of Defense. We were joined by another group from HKS that was visiting Delhi.

Meeting with the Minister of Commerce