Differing Perspectives: India, the World Bank and the 1963 Aid-India Negotiations
by Bruce Muirhead

The 1963 negotiations among India, the World Bank, and the Aid-India consortium represent a watershed. For the first time, members of the latter group expressed some disenchantment with what they perceived to be the slow rate of Indian economic growth caused in part, they argued, by the entrenched nature of India’s bureaucracy. This article brings out the main lines of argument among participants and attempts to evaluate the position of each. It also demonstrates the arm-twisting and coalition-building by the United States of, and with, other consortium members in order to achieve what the US believed to be the desired result, that is, increased aid to India, the world’s largest democracy and foil to the People’s Republic of China.

Learning to Think the Unthinkable: Lessons from India’s Nuclear Tests
by C. Christine Fair

 

This essay contends that the 1998 tests were a tactical – not strategic – surprise to the US and international community. It proceeds to map out four main arguments. First, following India’s 1974 test, the US did not detect New Delhi’s changing cost–benefit calculus with respect to testing. Second, even if the US had been able to ascertain these shifting perceptions, there is little it could have done to deter India as the US nonproliferation agenda with respect to India was subsumed within other policy goals. Third, the one thing that the US could have done was the one thing that it made no effort towards: It never considered – much less formulated – a contingency plan to govern engagement with New Delhi should India resume testing. Nor were advance preparations undertaken to guide interactions with Pakistan following an Indian blast. Fourth, this lacuna in policy instruments persists to date despite apprehensions about North Korean and Iranian nuclear aspirations and intentions.

The United States’ Imposition of Religious Freedom: The International Religious Freedom Act and India
by Laurie Cozad

The International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998 was founded in order to address the global problem of religious persecution. While this is undoubtedly a worthy goal, any nation’s unilateral action dealing with religious persecution is bound to be undermined by its own particular cultural biases. It is therefore interesting to examine the IRFA as it has been applied to a country such as India, for such an analysis reveals the following: those charged with the implementation of the IRFA proceed from specific ideological motivations that, at certain times and in certain contexts, result in the privileging of particular religious groups over others. This article thus has two goals: first, to explore the IRFA and the cultural assumptions which guided its formation and continue to govern its implementation; second, to analyze the problematic as well as the potentially beneficial aspects of the IRFA as it enters into a religio-political landscape very different from that in which it was conceived.

Nuclear Diplomacy Up Close: Strobe Talbott on the Clinton Administration and India
by Bill Finan

The essay reviews former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott’s memoir of his diplomatic efforts in South Asia both before and after the 1998 nuclear tests were carried out by India and Pakistan. Why the Clinton administration failed to deal with the nuclear threat in South Asia seriously before 1998 is examined first, with the finding that the administration’s argument – and Talbott’s – that other foreign policy matters were more demanding only highlights the administration’s inadequate concern with South Asia generally. Talbott’s role in trying to gain India’s signature on the CTBT is also evaluated, with the conclusion that, although he failed to reach that goal, his diplomacy did reengage the United States with India, which has formed the basis for more stable and fluent relations.