Obama calling India: Is anyone listening?
President Barack Obama will be coming to India later this week. He is the third US president to visit India in this decade, and the only one to have done it so early in his term. Yet, the visit has not triggered any great popular interest. In my article titled " In Bush's footsteps in India " in the Walls Street Journal Online, published on November 2, 2010, I outline the possible issues on the agenda, and the reason for the lack of expectation from this visit. In a longer version of the article " Obama calls on India: Is anyone listening? " I contrast the different political contexts between President Obama's visit now, and that of his predecessor President Bush in 2006. I suggest that President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh shared a political vision for India, and that enabled the two leaders to stake so much political capital on issues such as the civilian nuclear deal that the two signed. In contrast, India does not seem to figure significant...