IndiaPost.com - Look beyond India’s markets: MPs

The United States should look into India’s needs, challenges and its democratic value system, rather than look at it as merely a lucrative market, was a concerted opinion of a delegation of Indian Members of Parliament at a business gathering in New York recently.

Representing the changing face of Indian politics, the all-party delegation of young Indian Parliamentarians who are members of the India-US Forum of Parliamentarians (IUFP) brought to fore the strengths and challenges shaping the Indian economy at an elite luncheon gathering of the US-India Business Council (USIBC), sponsored by the State Bank of India, at the exclusive Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan on Feb 13.

Responding to a question on what India wants most from the US-India relations, Suresh Prabhu, the senior most member of the delegation said, “The United States should recognize India’s agricultural needs and the crisis its farmers are facing. In the 1960s the US support helped India achieve its first green revolution. Secondly, the US should look into high-tech transfers into India rather than see it as an outsourcing destination for low tech back office jobs. Thirdly, no other country believes in the values of freedom and democracy like India, which practices them as a way of life. The US should support that value system.”

Leading the delegation was BJ Panda, Member of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Parliament, from Orissa and Co-chairman of the IUFP. Panda belongs to the Biju Janata Dal party.

Others on the delegation were Prabhu, member of Lok Sabha from Maharashtra (Shiv Sena); Dinesh Trivedi, Member of Rajya Sabha from West Bengal (All India Trinamool Congress); Robert Kharshiing, Member of Rajya Sabha from Meghalaya (Nationalist Congress Party); Sachin Pilot, MP from Rajasthan (Indian National Congress); and Ajay Maroo, Member of the Rajya Sabha from Jharkhand (Bharatiya Janata Party).

The young parliamentarians in their brief speeches, impressed upon the Manhattan business elite that despite ideological differences between the different political parties, they were all united and single-mindedly focused on India’s socio-economic progress.

“It’s a great time to represent India,” said Panda in his address. “There’s never been a better time.”

Despite talk of the phenomenal growth of the Indian economy, if there seem to be political snags in policy reform, Panda said that “in a country of a billion people, 29 states, 45 political parties, 22 different languages, building a consensus is not quick. But our own delegation representing a vast array of opinion belonging as we do to different political parties, demonstrates the real strength of India,” he added. Half of the delegation members belonged to the current ruling UPA coalition and the other half belonged to the Opposition NDA coalition, which was in power prior to the present government, he pointed out.

It was not just the economics, but also the geo-political growth of India has been impressive, Panda said. “India today is spending three-quarters of a billion dollars for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and also in other parts of the world,” he informed.

There are several challenges to be overcome, he admitted. “We need to do a thousand percent more to be able to attract foreign investments, and still we would be attracting only one-sixth of what China gets in terms of foreign direct investments.”

Trivedi, who is an alumni of the University of Texas, said he had always wondered why the US and India, despite being great democracies did not engage more meaningfully for the past so many decades. “Today that has changed,” he said. “And what has changed is, opportunity.”

The former cabinet minister Prabhu said there was no international event these days, that’s complete without mentioning India. “India is the flavor of the season. There’s a lot of euphoria surrounding its booming economy. Our job is to turn that euphoria into reality.”

India is poised to become a trillion dollar economy and there was tremendous opportunity for the world businesses to invest there, he added.

As the MPs indulged in amiable competition to attract investments in their respective states, Pilot said, “It does not matter which state you invest in, so long as you do it in India.”

While challenges like lack of infrastructure, cumbersome bureaucracy etc. are commonly perceived problems, the real challenges facing India are that of land and water, Prabhu pointed out. “With increasing population, our natural resources of land and water are becoming scarce and our greatest challenge is finding solutions to leverage these limited resources for optimum use,” he said.

Meghalaya MP Kharshiing said what people of India needed a lot of was humility. “We often speak of our 5000-6000 year old culture and heritage, but do not talk of our poverty, educated unemployment, low quality of life, extremist movements such as the Naxal movement. One great challenge is how to make India quality conscious,” he said adding that for that the country needed to have a national government and not multi-party coalitions.

On his part, Pilot said that having visited the US a few times now, he has noticed that with familiarity, the smiles were getting wider and handshakes warmer. “It is now up to us to build on the fundamentals laid down through the Indo-US strategic alliance,” he said.

However, Pilot added that what mattered most was how the life of the average Indian was bettered. “And the scope for doing that is phenomenal,” he pointed out.

The MPs addressed questions raised by the audience on investments in Indian real estate, broadcasting and media, on Special Economic Zones, healthcare and efficiency of the government.

While Kharshiing elaborately explained how Indian parliamentarians, despite their party squabbles and differences, were united when it came to serious developmental issues concerning the future of the country, Panda concluded by saying, “Let’s not pretend it’s not a rowdy place (the Parliament). A bird’s eye view perhaps shows only chaos. But there’s a method in all that madness. As an MP for the last six years, I have seen that no ruling government in the last five years has had a majority, but has been working with a coalition. And that’s the magic of it, and that’s what stands us in good stead.”

The event was coordinated by Timothy G Massad, Board Member of USIBC; also in attendance were Consul General in New York Neelam Deo and Deputy Consul General AR Ghanashyam.