More than 2 million Indian Americans, many of the richest U.S. corporations and both presidential candidates are closely interested in the visit today of Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to Washington.
The Vajpayee visit straddles two agendas for future U.S.-India ties. The old familiar agenda, a plaything of bureaucrats and foreign policy specialists, remains in thrall to various anxieties. India's nuclear ambitions alarm the nonproliferation specialists in Washington. President Clinton has described the Kashmir region, disputed between India and Pakistan since 1947, as "the most dangerous place in the world."
The "old" India agenda also focuses on poverty and social issues. Thirty percent of the world's poorest people live in India. Child labor, societal attitudes toward women, coal-generated electricity causing global warming concerns and fears about the AIDS pandemic also figure prominently in the list of worries.
By contrast, a newer but narrower agenda is transforming the U.S. connection with this rising Asian power. In recent months, business journalists have gushed over info-tech entrepreneurs in India and the U.S. The sheer size of India's domestic market mesmerizes American companies. India's 6% growth performance since 1997 has shamed the East Asian "miracle economies."
Enormous infrastructure needs, especially electricity shortfalls, beckon technical solutions and financing from outsiders. Major U.S. corporations expanding business in India these days include General Electric, ExxonMobil, Ford, Enron, IBM, Unocal, Citibank and Chase.
To be sure, India's glacial pace of change can be maddening. During the 1990s, China attracted 45 times more foreign investment than India. And Indians still joke that theirs "is the country of the future, and always will be." But India's once-shuttered markets are nonetheless yielding to the demands of global commerce.
A crucial element in the new India agenda is the dynamic place of Indian Americans. They figure, in this election year, both as conscientious voters and generous donors. These 1970s-era arrivals have become the richest single immigrant group in the U.S.; they include the entrepreneurs who created hotmail.com and E-Lock Technologies, a firm pioneering secure electronic commercial transactions.
