UK passe, US becomes India's new 'best friend'

FORGOTTEN FRIEND: Panelists on Face the Nation discuss if India doesn't care much for UK.

        

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New Delhi: After a decade as British Prime Minister, Tony Blair is stepping down to make way for Gordon Brown to take over on Wednesday. It's a much-awaited change of guard for the Labour party. But what does it mean for India?

The question that was being asked on CNN-IBN's Face The Nation was: Has India's obsession with the US meant the end of our historic relationship with Britain?

On the panel of experts to try and answer the question were British High Commissioner to India, Sir Michael Arthur; Professor London School of Economics, Lord Meghnad Desai; and Former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, G Parthasarthy.

At the beginning of the show, 16 per cent of the viewers agreed that India was losing its historic relationship with Britain, while 84 per cent of the viewers disagreed.

Is India obsessed with the US?

According to Lord Meghnad Desai, the US had much more to offer in terms of manufacturing technology than UK, but he said that there was much more goodwill and awareness on part of the government in UK of India.

"I think that this goodwill and awareness will take Indo-UK relations a long way for unlike the Americans, the Britons do not have to be taught about India," he said.

To this, G Parthasarthy added that he did not think India was in any way obsessed with the US. "The US is such a powerful country that it features heavily in the perceptions of everybody else. In India's case, our economic relations and trade ties with the US are far more than what we have with anyone else. But this has not come to us at the cost of our relationship with the US. We are developing a very mature relationship with Britain, we are putting aside the bickerings of the past, and I think, this will continue, irrespective of who rules Britain - Labour or Conservative."

Sir Michael Arthur added his two bit by saying that he did not think India was obsessed with the US. "The fact is that India and Britain's relationship has roared forward in the last few years. Whether its on strategic political issues - you heard Gordon Brown talk about terrorism - or whether it's about economy - Gordon Brown ran the economy and we have seen a fantastic growth in Indian investments in Britain and vice versa - or whether it's about people relations, we need to tackle them all together."

He added that the British had become, over time, the second biggest cumulative investors in India, citing the example of Vodafone which had just taken over Hutch in India.

Lord Meghnad Desai said that the British were finding different ways to invest in India. "i have witnessed three launches on the London AIM market for Bollywood companies. They will find other ways of getting into the Indian market because India puts obstacles in front of foreign investments coming into the country. The Indians are investing more in UK than the other way around. The trick is to make it easier for foreigners to come and invest in India."

He added that India must lose its victim mentality and its fear of foriegn capital for investments to come its way.