Why India has been missed out of Epcot World Showcase

Has anyone ever visited the World Showcase part of EPCOT theme park in Orlando, Florida? If yes, I wonder how many Indians felt the need to showcase India and why it is missing? Anybody may feel biased about my opinion and question why India must be showcased? I can say only one thing - "The world is incomplete and non-existent without India and indian history which is responsible for so many inventions and discoveries because of which the world is running today"

Have the people who conceived this idea of world showcase forgot who invented zero? It is the Indians. Their theme parks which are controlled by machines can't work if they can't understand zero. It is we who had formidable armies and the best navies in the world at one point. It is India which once was invincible by Alexander the great. It is we who created Ayurveda. It is the only country in the world which had gold, diamonds, silver, perl etc in huge quantities that they were used to decorate palaces whenever they were in excess. It is India where Nalanda University attracted 1000's of students across the world to come and study. It is the first known university where so many subjects were being offered. It is the wealth of India which attracted the British. Such is the fame and name India carries and I wonder how it was forgotten.

As I was watching the 360 degree film in the China (world showcase), I began to wonder what if India was really having a place here. Before that, I saw the movies of France, USA, Canada and China. It was only China which had a perfect presentation. They showcased not only how rich their history is but also how they are gradually becoming a developed world. The main goal was to convince the audience that China is the best example of a country where there is a balanced blend of the past and the present and has the best potential to become a developed country like USA. I feel India is surely a similar example.

Let's forget for a moment that in many sectors China is way ahead of India. Yet India is a country the world and the world history can never forget. Why only past? India is the second fastest growing economy and that being a present fact is also a strong reason why it should be showcased in EPCOT if it truly has to be called "WORLD SHOWCASE". It is also true that Greece and Egypt are missing. These two countries have equally rich history and all ingredients to be represented here.

When I was listening to the Chinese - they described several things and I started comapring with India solely for the reason that Chinese and Indians have some of the best inventions and discoveries and were contemporaries for centuries. The world owes a lot to these two countries.
Let's see some similarities. I took these based on what was presented in the movie.

They talked about gobi desert. We have the Thar desert. They have the giant Himalayas and we too have them. They have the mighty Yangse River while we have the mighty Ganges (of course, Yamuna, Cauveri etc). The narrator was saying that anyone who can swim in Yangse can fight the Gods. In our case, anyone whose ashes are immersed in Ganges reaches heaven. If they have the Great Wall, we have the mighty and majestic temples of TamilNadu. We have the beautiful Taj, and the world famous Hampi, Halebid, Badami, Aihole, Pattadkal, Ajanta, Ellora. and hundreds of others each a unique masterpiece. Find out one example in the world which can match these latter ones in style and richness. They are unique. All these are wonders of the world.

The movie talked about Chinese arts, dances and music. Can anyone find Carnatic and Hindustani anywhere in the world? Can anyone find dances like Bharatnatyam, Kuchupidi, Manipuri etc. elsewhere? Nowhere. They are unique. So many musical instruments were made and played in India. Can anyone forget Kautilya's Arthashastra which is a masterpiece like the Sun zu's (Chinese) "The Art of War". Both talk of military strategies with the help of which one can easily defeat enemies.

With respect to traditions, Indians still towers the world. Countless number of rituals each with its own significance ( of course, some of them still are superstitious) are practised by people in our country. The same festival is celebrated differently in different parts of india. Can we think of a country where 16 main languages exist? I really can't think of any other than ours. How can one forget India is the birthplace of Jainism, Buddhism, hinduism. How can one forget Mahatma Gandhi, Chandragupta Maurya, Asoka, Vikramidtya, Harshavardhana, Raja Raja Chola, Krishnadevaraya, Shah Jahan, Akbar etc. ?

The movie also mentioned about Chinese silk and unique dresses they wear. Can anyone think of a country where sarees were worn from the BC era? Is there any country where one can find different types of dresses in different parts? It is India.

How can we also ignore the fact that India is rising not because of government but despite the government? We are the largest democracy and for centuries our country existed(in terms of empire) from Iran till Java. How can one forget the fact that rarely one can find a country that was so difficult to be defeated in the 19th century as much as India by the Britishes because of the strong unity that bound us.

All these questions are not for a reader, but to the people who conceived and executed the idea of the WORLD SHOWCASE in Orlando? My final word to them - "You are fooling the world by showing WORLD SHOWCASE without showing India, Egypt and Greece."

Action plan against Pakistan

People in India are very angry at the fact that Pakistan has been the mastermind behind all terror attacks and does nothing to crack down terrorist camps. This despite the fact that the same terrorists are carrying out attacks in Pakistan itself. The problem is ISI controls Pakistan and not the govt. The army and ISI run the country.

I still remember after the attack on Parliament in 2001, there was a fast track process in place to extradite Dawood Ibrahim ( we all know about this monster). But diplomacy did not work. At that time Indian govt relied on US's support to crack down. Although US no longer has that deep relationship with Pakistan that existed before Kargil war, it is still hesitant to take any action. This is because Pakistan's army is required to capture Osama. The Afghanistan Pak border is the new battleground and the US army is busy with it. If India declares a war, all the troops from either side will be diverted to Kashmir. This will obstruct US plans. Just to ensure that it doesn't happen, Rice ( US secretary of State) came to India. What a shoddy diplomacy? US says it needs evidence against Pak? What sort of evidence did US have when it attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. Not anything concrete. So, is Indian life less precious than American one? Why should Indian govt wait for US to decide its action plan. Ideally, the govt should bomb all those terror camps, locations of which are clearly known to us. Pakistan per se is not our enemy. It is this ISI and Army whose tacit support spawns new terror camps and accelerates the growth of existing ones.

Why should India still listen to handover Dawood when Pak will not hand him over to India. India must take action on its own. Go for the war as coercive diplomacy doesn't work. In fact, these criminals must be shot at sight rather than capturing them.

In 2001, when Parliament was attacked, the then govt resorted to diplomatic means to cripple Pakistan. Indian govt stopped all trade with Pakistan, isolated it from Commonweath nation, stripped its status of the Most Favoured Nation (MFN), crippled its economy, stopped all confidence building measures, stopped all train links. This in a way helped India as there was no major terrorist attack. At least Govt took a very tough step and showed to the world that we are not soft.

Pakistan sensed this and resorted to Bangaldesh to destabilize India. Today, Bangladesh and Pak are 2 sides of the same coin - enemy of our nation.

The Indian govt must resort to tough diplomatic steps, and also plan for military action as Pakistan will not change. However, it must be borne in mind that taking a step of military is going to cost India more. We are still a growing economy and any war will slow us down and the fact that Pakistan is nuclear power must be kept in mind. It is a must step, but must be taken with greatest caution and sensibility.

I wish Indira Gandhi was the PM at this point. She would have gone for a war by giving deaf ears to US. She is the toughest leader when it comes to terrorism India has ever seen. She was the one who formed the NE India, curbed terrorism in Punjab, clamped down Anti-Hindi sentiment in TamilNadu, annexed Goa, went for a complete war with Pak in 1971 by saying to the then US President - "The President of a developed country need not dictate terms to the Prime Minister of a devloping country as to what should be done in a crisis like this"...It was the boldest statement ever made by an Indian leader to an US president.

if she was here, she would have asked RAW to kill Dawood Ibrahim. The govt must revamp internal security - create a single investigative agency and a single intelligence agency so that co-ordination problem doesn't exist. The govt must also give powers to RAW not just to get intelligence but also to take counter terrorist steps.

26/11: Mumbai attacks: Intelligence or political failure

In the first place I salute all those martyrs who died fighting for the country. My heartful condolences to all those who have been killed or injured in the attacks.

The attacks on Mumbai are unique and most dastardly. This is because just a group of 10 terrorists held the entire city at ransom. Such a scale and intensity was never seen before. All top hotels, an open railway station, a cafe etc were all attacked killing Indians and multinationals. Of course, this article doesn't concentrate on the attack per se, but tries to analyze if it is easy to prevent such attacks. The article tries to see at 2 aspects - Intelligence failure and politcal failure.

Intelligence failure:

India's external intelligence agency RAW had told 4 times to Govt of India and Maharashtra but the Special Protection group (SPG) left barely minutes before terrorist attack. The SPG however had no clue about the attack on Oberoi. Do you call this intelligence failure? No, it is intelligence co-ordination failure. Our RAW is good enough to get inputs, but despute protocol no one cares when RAW gives its information. Forget that. RAW gets paid so less and the stress they have calls for reforms. What's the point of setting up such agencies if their utlization is not up to the mark? We have too many intelligence agencies - CBI, CID, each state police(intelligence), IB, Directorate of Army, Navy and Air force intelligence. Yet there is no co-ordination amongst them. Read this article I posted earlier regarding intelligence reforms that were seriosulsy implemented post Kargil war. At least at that time government was serious and took stern steps.

Let's look at what happened. Indian boat Kuber (officially registered with Indian govt) went to shores beyond Gujarat. The Pakistani ISI/terrorists knew about the boat. They killed the fishermen and others and disguised themselves as Indian fishermen. They had the GPS with built in maps of how to reach Mumbai. They also got fake documents and ID cards that made Coast Guard trust them. The coast Gurard trusted them because the boat was a registered boat and they further checked all documents which were genuine. Where is this failure coming from - It is a systemic failure and only the political establishment can solve this. Recently, Karnataka Govt has issued mandatory orders for smar cards (supposedly not tamperable) to all fishermen in the coastal region. Do you think this will help? May be to a great extent, but not completely. How does a political system check the fact that more than 50% of the boats are unregistered. Who should patrol or supervise...Politicians or Navy, Coastal Guard or Marine Commandoes - definitely the onus is on the latter set.

In our country, there is no way we can identify a person uniquely like SSN in USA. Anybody can fake Driving License, PAN cards, Ration cards - no check on this. All this is not the responsibility of the govt. It is the resposnsibility of all citizens as well. Recently the govt ordered cell phone operators to do a thorough checking on who buys SIM cards and become subscribers. The cell phone operators have this complaint as to the fact that they trust the documents produced which could be any of the above mentioned and thereby give them numbers. So, is this now a systemic failure? It is a failure both at the politica level and at the citizen level. Go to several franchisee stores. Pay them a little bribe and they give you cell phone connection. Is this political failure? Definitely not. People themselves are to be blamed for all these as they don't practise honesty in several cases.


Political failure:

Undoubtedly, politicians are responsible for most failures. As a best case example the govt in the early 1990's introduced an act that was to prevent illegal infiltration from Bangaldesh to the NE Indian states. But the Congress just to get votes from these illegal immigrants continued to execute this act despite High Court and Supreme Court orders. If people can simply come into the country, they can do a whole lot of destructive activities without any check. We did seal the Western borders and thereby Kashmir is safe today. We must seal our Eastern borders. We now have enough evidences to show that Bangaldeshi immigrants were trained by Pakistani's ISI and LeT to carry out such attacks. The organization SIMI works in close co-ordination with such immigrants. All these are funded by Pakistani ISI and organizations like LeT.

In 2004 the govt had set up National technical Reserach Organization (NTRO) which would act as a super intelligence agency - a single window. But this is not yet functional. Why? There is ego clashes amongst various intelligence agencies. The political leadership has not been serious about implementing these changes on a fast track. Let's look at the track record of the present Govt. It is so bad and this year alone 48 attacks have taken place in major cities. Our very own PM has been insisting on setting up Federal Investigative Agency (FIA). Why this has not been implemented? Why we don't have a tough law (forget POTA, but something at least for terror activities)? The present govt just to have vote banks from Muslims doesn't want to punish those who did the PArliament attack, don't want to take action against SIMI. They don't want to pass state laws by different states despite Maharashtra having one such. All this because of Congress and BJP clashes. Rajasthan, MP, Gujarat, Karnataka all want those bills to be passed by the Center. The Central govt is least bothered. These laws are not POTA but resemble Maharashtra's MCOCA law. Of course, it is another argument that having such laws itself is going to help or not. That however, doesn't mean don't have the law. The govt's logic is simply irrational.

We don't have trained Marine Police. They are ill-equipped. The number of boats, resources are so low. Despite the govt's approval they have not yet received. All caught in red tape bureaucracy. Who must supervise this? It is definitely the political establishment. Coastal police stations are setup but neither equipment nor training has been given. Police reforms not being done is the root cause of everything. Some places there is equipment but either are dysfunctional or have poor design. For example, a poor CCTV camera failed to get a camera footage of a shootout in Delhi IGI airport. Whom to blame for this? When honest, brave officers like Hemant Karakre, Ashok Kamthe all had defective bullet proof jackets, whom do you blame for this?

Despite having credible inputs, political establishments have not been serious in implementing security changes. There is a total lapse in implementing them. Even today, go to Delhi's roads where bomb blasts took place. You will not find one policeman with any equipments or simple revolvers while terrorists carry AK-47, bombs and modern revolvers. Is this police failure? Yes, and also a political failure..

As yet another example, when NSG was asked to come there was a delay of 10 hours because the request had to be first sent to Central Govt by the state govt. Why all these crap rules when there is danger? NSG must be given enough powers to reach locations without waiting for any authority. How can u delay such elite commando forces in terms of heightened crisis like this?

Lets' not forget. Whenever there has been a blast or incident of this kind for a week or so patrolling is increased, everything is kept under vigil. But how far can you sustain this vigilance? It has to go down with time. It is natural. When the vigil is strong, nothing happens and everything that has happened is when vigilance is at its lowest point.

Here's another interesting statistics taken from IBNLive which clearly demonstrates a political failure:

After the 1993 serial blasts, Indian Navy hired fishing trawlers to patrol the coast and the state government was supposed to take over in a couple of years but that never happened.

There are 27 departments to take care of maritime security, but hardly any co-ordination between them.

The facts get even more damning. Colonel (retired) Mahendra Pratap Choudhary, who trained the first lot of National Security Guard commandos in the country, was roped in to put up a team of Mumbai Police commandos in 1993 but the unit was disbanded in 2001

A Quick Response Team was formed after the 2003 Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar blasts, but that too is dysfunctional.

After the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai local trains on July 11, 2006, a separate investigation committee to follow the money trail of terror was initiated. This also fell through.

Conclusion:

Both political failure and intelligence co-ordination failure has led to the present situation and unless there is co-ordination amongst intelligence agencies and the corresponding political will to take the recommendations seriously we won't be able to prevent such attacks.

Indian flag touches the moon - Chandrayan special

If there is a good classic example to demonstrate that India is a land of extremities, then it is the successful moon launch - Chandrayan.

In a country which stands 50th in Global competitive index, 66th in hunger index, 83rd in corruption index, a successful space odyssey to the moon still appeared a dream. We today are the 4th country in the world to put a flag on the moon and 6th to have launched a moon mission. We also are the 6th country in the world to go nuclear. Today, India matches China in nuclear warhead capability (although China is slightly ahead of us - India possesses 140 while China 160).

No one could have expected such an engineering feat from an Indian government organization (ISRO) in a short span. Program conceived : 2003 Program accomplished: 2008

"India can achieve anything. It sure is a proud moment for us." - An elated Madhavan Nair (ISRO chief)
"With a minuscule budget of Rs.386 cr(lowest ever moon mission), we have shown that we have mastered the cutting-edge technology in space. Besides, the moon mission motivated the younger generation."


First of all, moon mission was chosen for a lot of reasons. It was not to match China. It was to probe the presence of He-3 on moon which if found and brought back to the Earth could be used power up nuclear plants. Moreover, all moon missions till date have concentrated on one or more areas of the moon. There is no comprehensive mapping of moon's surface. It is still unexplored. No one really has done an extensive study of minerals on the moon and its reaction to solar flares and sunlight. What mineral composition does moon's craters have? Does moon really have water?

"For the first time in the history of India, an Indian-made satellite is circulating the Moon," a jubilant Madhavan Nair told PTI adding "this will be written in the history of Indian space in golden letters".

Secondly, of the 11 payloads that make up the mission, 5 are indigenously developed, 2 are from NASA, 3 from ESA and 1 from Bulgaria. In brief, their functionality is as below:

Even before discussing that it should be noted that to track and communicate with objects beyond the earth's pull, we need Deep Space Antennas. So far, only US and Russia had developed such giant antennae and even China had to rely on them. A few years ago china developed its own with almost 34 m in diameter. India developed its own and is 32 m in diameter and situated in Byalulu (near Bangalore). This itself was an achievement.

Compare: US - 74 m diameter, ESA - 34 m, Russia 64 m and China - 34m. Now, India's is 32m. Moreover, this was developed by Indian companies - 38 domestic companies including state-owned Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL), L&T and Godrej & Boyce, and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
Now, the payloads in brief staring with ones made in India..

1)Moon Impact probe (MIP) - Carrying India's flag, a sanskrit shloka embedded on it, is a brainchild of Shri Abdul Kalam. It has a spectrometer and video imaging syatem

2)High energy X-ray Spectrometer - to carry out spectral studies using X-ray energies

3)Terrain mapping (TMC) - one of the best in the world can take near and far pictures of the moon and send 3D maps of high spatial and altitude resolution assisiting in understanding moon's evolution. The TMC makes Chandrayaan the most unique and sophisticated moon mission

4) Hyper Spectral Imagery - mapping lunar surface in 64 contiguous bands.

5) lunar Laser Ranging instrument - will do a morphology of large bases and study properties of lithosphere.



The ones from NASA include - Miniature Synthetic Radar to study the poles and Moon Minerology mapper. The ones from ESA include Sub KeV Atomic Reflector that would study moon's interaction with the sun and Near IR spectrometer the crust, and C1XS - will capture high resolution X ray images. Bulgaria has Radiation Dose Monitor to study radiation effects.




Thirdly, what needs to be appreciated is the fact that Indians have been doing extremely well in space research ever since 1975 or so when the technology transfer from Russia and US stopped completely to India. At that time, we had to do everything on our own. Thanks to Vikram Sarabhai whose vision was to go the indigenous way as he believed Indians in the past centuries have shown they were space experts even without precise instruments or other gadgets. The credit must go to ISRO.

Fourthly, this successful launch has opened avenues for further space exploration and tie up with other space agencies in the world. The commerical wing of ISRO, Antrix Corporation had earned millions of dollars to launch other countries' payload on our spacecraft earlier this year. Now, the company will progress further. Already, Russia has signed a deal with ISRO for Chandrayan 2 which will have a rover (will be developed by Russia) that will land on the moon. The launch spacecraft will be that of India's - GSLV. India's GSLV - III will match China's capability in launching vehicles.


"India has the flag on Mount Everest and now it is on the moon, he said. I congratulate ISRO on this remarkable achievement," Abdul Kalam


Fifthly, we need to realize that unlike other countries which spend a lot on space, Indian Govt spends very little on space and yet ISRO has demonstrated remarkable engineering marvels in the past 20 years. For example, read this article to know the success rate. Their success rate is very high almost comparable to US and China in terms of launching capabilities. China is far ahead in terms of reconnaissance satellites that can destroy other satellites. India has always been cautious of not having developed such a capability because it would result in space race on a military level. Of course, China is ahead even in international space stations. However, if India sends a manned mission by 2015 (as declared by ISRO), then it will outdo China's target of 2020 which will give it an edge.

Sixthly, let us not forget that we achieved success in the first attempt and it is a giant leap. The readers of this article may argue that at this point every country must possibly aware of the latest techniques to launch a moon mission. However, I would like to also tell the fact that knowing is different from delivering in the first attempt with 100% precision.

Sevethly, the budget used is Rs.386 cr. It is the cheapest moon mission any country could think of.

(All images from Hindu, IT, Business Standard)

India now is second in the world to have exceptional remote sensing capability

India is the second country in the world that has an indigenously developed and perfected the art of producing high resolution maps of objects moving in the world. India's Technology Experiment Satellite (TES) can offer maps of objects anywhere in the world which is at least a meter apart.

Only US possessed such a capability till date. In fact, the pictures of US war on Afghanistan was captured by TES very accurately.

After its launch in 2001 (this news I discovered late and hence people who knew this should forgive me for posting the news this late), India is still the second country in the world which has this special satellite.

Here's the BBC and wikipedia sources as references.

India has the world's largest Remote sensing satellite constellation

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has always worked on projects, which have benefited the country as a whole and perhaps is the only space agency in the world involved purely in this work (except now that it has launched programs for exploration beyond the Earth's trajectory).

In this connection, as Indians we must be proud of the fact that our remote sensing satellite constellation is the largest in the world used solely for civilian purposes. We have now 8 satellites in a constellation. They are:

1) IRS 1-D
2) Oceansat - 1 (monitors the chlorophyll content of oceans and the sea surface temperature. ISRO scientists use the information to identify areas where cold, nutrient-rich water wells up from the ocean floor, which in turn attract fish)
3)Technology Experiment Satellite
4) Resourcesat - 1
5) Cartosat - 1
6) Cartosat - 2
7) Cartosat 2A (capable of detecting missile launches in all regions surrounding India. Also, it can real time 3D mappings of regions in the world. Check out this image of Delhi got from the satellite)
8) IMS 1

These provide the following services:

• Preharvest crop area and production estimation of major crops.
• Drought monitoring and assessment based on vegetation condition.
• Flood risk zone mapping and flood damage assessment.
• Hydro-geomorphological maps for locating underground water resources for drilling well.
• Irrigation command area status monitoring
• Snow-melt run-off estimates for planning water use in down stream projects
• Land use and land cover mapping
• Urban planning
• Forest survey
• Wetland mapping
• Environmental impact analysis
• Mineral Prospecting
• Coastal studies
• Integrated Mission for Sustainable Development (initiated in 1992) for generating locale-specific prescriptions for integrated land and water resources development in 174 districts.

Source:

National Remote Sensing Agency(NRSA) in Hyderabad is the central agency in India that collects all signals from this constellation.

The best part is ISRO has already linked 69 hospitals in remote areas of India such as the Andaman Islands to 19 hospitals in India's main cities. A health worker in a remote location can then transmit a patient's medical information to a specialist in seconds and, in many cases, a video consultation is sufficient for diagnosis.

If government could realize enormous potential of this reality it can bring drastic changes in a abysmal health system we have.

Bush's greatest foreign policy success

On a blog that contains articles related to India, the title above seems contradictory to it. However, this article concerns India. The outgoing American President George W. Bush is known for all wrong actions and undoubtedly it is he who messed up the world big time. In contrast ,he is the best President who has over zealously changed US's foreign policy (favorable) towards India.

It was 1998 when Clinton came down heavily on Vajpayee, but Vajpayee, with his diplomatic skills completely altered Clinton's mindset. The result - the entire US senate started rethinking on its ties to India. US needed a country in SE Asia for strategic reasons to counter weigh communist China. India's vibrant democracy coupled with Indians in US contributing to US economy tilted Clinton in India's favor. The consequence was within 6 months of imposing sanctions against India it was lifted. US for the first time began to think India as a serious growing power and began to disengage Pakistan. The close proximity of US towards Pak took a back seat because of Vajpayee's pressure on Clinton. It was 1999 Kargil misadventure by Pak that convinced Vajpayee that he had to turn the tables in India's favor. So began the diplomatic journey of bringing the largest and most ancient democracies together.

The then US Secretary of State Madeline Albright was fully convinced with a growing India. When Bush came to power, nobody knew what his policy would be. With time, Bush became overzealous towards India. His thought about India, "The coming century will see democratic India’s arrival as a force in the world — a changing economy in which three of its five wealthiest citizens are software entrepreneurs" convinced Indian diplomats that Bush is going to change Indo-US relations.

At that time, Bush invited the then Indian home minister L.K. Advani. He remarked, "Mr. Advani, even before you came, your toughness and your history reached me". Advani began to establish a close association with Mr. Bush. The first thing Advani did was to put pressure on US to declare terrorist organizations like Lashkar and Hiszbul as international terrorist organizations. A declaration of this sort was not liked by Colin Powell (the then Secretary of State). However, Bush personally intervened and did what India wanted. Slowly, Bush isolated Pakistan and began to push relations with India without considering Pakistan. It was Vajpayee and Advani who made Pakistan dance to their tunes with the help of US. The entire US was exposed to the terror matrix of Pakistan and its evil intentions. Bush, particularly, realized the significance of India. The sudden supply of American jets, fighter plans, joint naval and military exercises with Indian counterparts, and many other such events were breakthroughs.

Bush is primarily responsible for changing US relations with India outside the Pakistan axis. He personally had laid foundation for nuclear deal with Vajpayee. But, government fell and before its fall Vajpayee clearly conveyed to Bush that India will not give up its right to test and will not sign either NPT or CTBT. Bush also could not go ahead with a deal with India without amending Hyde Act in American Senate. It was then Condolezza Rice who came in as the Secretary of State and worked together with Bush. Rice and Bush pushed for 123 Agreement just to deal with India. This is the greatest foreign policy deviation for one particular country which has not signed either CTBT or NPT. Bush overpowered all those opposing Senators who raised doubts about India's credibility. It was Bush who went at a lightning speed and met Indian PM Manmohan Singh and tabled the civilian deal. Of course, not to forget Indian NRIs and Indian diplomats worked round the clock to change Indo-US relations under Bush. And adding to all these was PM Manmohan Singh's personal government and credibility that was at stake. Mr. Singh's conviction helped him to remain rigid (It is another story that many assurances given by him later proved to be false). PM Singh must be congratulated for his perseverance. It was Mr. singh who really saw the need of getting close to US was more than a necessity. I am happy that both Congress and BJP stood same w.r.t US and not necessarily the nuclear deal.

The rest is known and today Bush had made it a law (It is another topic to debate on the intricacies of the deal). The single most contribution of Bush is that he got clearance from all NSG countries to deal with India. This event was not a joke. To personally convince all 45 nations to do deal with India and bring India out of nuclear apartheid was a herculean task. If Vajpayee's diplomacy changed Indo-US relations, Bush's pro India stance solidified the same.

Despite the fact that Bush has been a big failure, his biggest success has been his policy towards India. Hence, Bush is preferred more than Clinton with respect to Indian diplomacy.

Here are some of the excerpts from Bush's speech after Indo-US nuclear deal was signed:

"Even though the United States and India are separated by half the globe, we are natural partners as we head into the 21st century. Both our nations emerged from a colonial past to establish vibrant democracies. We have welcomed investment and private enterprise to become leaders in the global economy. We have stood against the dangers posed by extremists, who have carried out attacks in both our countries. We have demonstrated that we cherish liberty, honor human dignity, and respect the rule of law."

"This agreement sends a signal to the world: Nations that follow the path of democracy and responsible behavior will find a friend in the United States of America. The American people are proud of our strong relationship with India . And I am confident that the friendship between our two nations will grow even closer in the years ahead."

Such statements by an American President only signifies that India is now a significant player in US's foreign policy. Despite all this everything is not rosy. US is known for clandestine diplomatic moves. India must be cautious of this and work very smartly. Indian foreign policy since 1994 is getting mature and mature everyday. This cuts across the main parties - BJP and Congress which differ in semantics but not on protocol and policies. This will help foreign policy to a great extent.

For the complete speech, click here

But will Obama (if comes to power) be like Bush? No, he seems to be tough with India and this is a big mystery if and how he does incline to India.