The talks in Washington are part of moves by U.S. imperialism to push for wider military, economic, and diplomatic ties with India, a country of 1 billion people. Top U.S. officials have visited New Delhi in recent months, including a trip in late October by U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. His visit "seemed meant to reassure India that the intense American partnership with Pakistan, India's arch-rival, will not come at India's expense," observed the November 6 New York Times. A Defense Policy Group of military officials from the two countries is scheduled to discuss closer cooperation at meetings beginning in December, reported the paper.

For several decades after India's independence from Britain in 1947, the ruling bourgeois Congress Party had portrayed itself as the party of the poor and used socialist rhetoric to maintain support among masses of workers and peasants. India joined the Non-Aligned Movement and signed economic and military pacts with Moscow. This served the Stalinist regime in Russia, as it sought to gain diplomatic leverage in the region, both against U.S. imperialism and its rivals in Beijing.

In 1976 the United States was India's largest trade partner, and U.S. companies had $345 million invested in the country as of 1974. But Washington had to rely on Pakistan--smaller, more politically unstable, and economically less developed than India--as its chief military ally in the region.

In the decade following the fall of the Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Washington set a course to upgrade its relations with India, and the possibilities for more extensive investment, exploitation of cheap labor, and markets for products "Made in the USA."  
 
U.S. drops sanctions
U.S. president William Clinton first gave this effort a high profile with a March 2000 visit to the country, followed by the Bush administration's decision in September 2001 to lift economic and military sanctions imposed upon India after its government detonated five underground nuclear warheads in May 1998. Sanctions on Pakistan following similar tests have also been lifted.

Given the instability in Pakistan, Washington has set up a special unit of 2,200 troops on an assault ship in the Indian Ocean capable of launching a strike into Pakistan to grab the country's nuclear weapons if the Musharraf regime is threatened.

The capitalist rulers of Pakistan and India are bitter rivals, having fought three wars since the two countries were carved out of what was British colonial India in 1947. This division was imposed by British imperialism as part of its divide-and-rule tactics in the face of a powerful independence struggle in which the country's industrial proletariat played a leading part.

Their conflict over Kashmir has sparked two of the wars. New Delhi currently occupies two-thirds of Kashmir and Islamabad controls one-third. This disputed area is the scene of a long-standing struggle by working people for independence from both powers.

After the U.S. rulers began its war drive against Afghanistan in September, Washington has backed steps by New Delhi to suppress Kashmiri independence organizations. For example, U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft has recommended that Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad, Pakistan-based organizations that fight under the banner of Kashmiri independence and have clashed with Indian forces, be included in Washington's list of so-called "terrorist" organizations. Previously Washington had added Harkat ul-Mujaheddin, another Pakistan-based group, to the list.

The Indian military's war in Kashmir has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the last decade, including 800 so far this year.  
 
India the greater prize
Although Washington is cultivating closer ties with both countries, India is the more important economic and strategic prize for the imperialists, by virtue of its size and greater degree of industrial development. It is home to more than a billion people, one-third of whom are under 15 years of age. India is a substantial producer of agricultural commodities and industrial goods, in addition to possessing extensive mineral reserves. Its Gross Domestic Product in 1996 of $1.54 trillion dwarfs that of Pakistan, which had an output of $296.5 billion.

Pakistan's population stands at 145 million and the extent of industrial development is low. This extreme lopsidedness of its economy is shown by the fact that its 3.5 million textile workers--tens of thousands of whom face unemployment as U.S. markets shrink--make up 60 percent of its industrial workforce.

Almost one-fifth of India's exports go to the United States, which is also the source of 10 percent of its imports and its largest trading partner. This two-way commerce is increasing, and India is being touted as a source of high profits as its government accelerates the introduction of "reforms," aimed at opening up the economy to foreign investment and competition.

The Wall Street Journal reported that foreign institutional investors bought $748 million worth of Indian stocks in the four weeks to January 23 of this year--equal to half of the investment over the previous 12 months. The level of investment over the year to March 31, however, was only around one-tenth of the amount that flowed into China.

U.S. capitalists also benefit from the labor of scientists and professionals educated in India. Around one-third of the software engineers in Silicon Valley on the West Coast of the United States are immigrants from India.

The Indian government opened up share holdings to foreigners in 1993. Today, outside investors are allowed to own up to 26 percent of a company, a problem from the point of view of the imperialist powers. As well, India is still saddled with the legacy of precapitalist society and colonial exploitation. Commodities sell at different prices from one region to the next and products are taxed as they are transported internally across state borders.

Before New Delhi began a series of privatization and liberalization measures in the 1990s, a wide range of tariffs and other swadeshi (nationalist) policies afforded Indian producers a degree of insulation in the face of competition from the imperialist economies and competitors in the more industrialized semicolonial countries. With the aid of these protections, India was able to become self-sufficient in food production and develop its industrial capacity.  
 
Rulers press 'reforms'
New Delhi's application to join the World Trade Organization has provided a spur to further "reform" measures. On March 31 the government officially abolished tariffs on a list of 715 imports, in conformity with WTO rules. While the move was presented as a step towards modernization and greater "consumer choice," many refused to celebrate.

"For many Indian farmers and manufacturers...the new liberal import policies are a source of uncertainty and worry," reported the Washington Post. "Many Indian products are made in small, family-owned workshops that cannot compete with global prices, while most farmers own less than two acres of land and are accustomed to selling their crops at a minimum guaranteed price."

Leaders of farmers' organizations warned that their crops would not be able to compete with overseas commodities. "Seventy percent of Indians depend on farming in some way," said a member of parliament from a farming district. "Our farmers are not prepared, they depend on nature, and they cannot shift easily" to mechanized agriculture.

Many working people in India remain desperately poor. The World Bank estimates that the number of people living on less than $1 a day increased from 300 million in the 1980s to 340 million 1997. More than half the country's children are underweight and undernourished.

Attacks on workers' wages and conditions, along with moves to privatize the steel and other industries, have sparked major strikes and protests by workers. At the same time, the government has recently floated a proposal to eliminate the reach of labor legislation, which includes some protections for workers, into newly created "export-oriented zones."
 
 
Related article:
Washington seeks closer ties with India  
 
 
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