India's America Obsession

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India's America Obsession
Sadanand Dhume: India's America Obsession - WSJ.com

For a glimpse of the complex undercurrents that shape U.S.-India relations, look at the drama unfolding in a sleepy corner of California. In the San Francisco suburb of Pleasanton, about 1,500 students, the vast majority of them from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, have sparked a diplomatic incident between Washington and New Delhi. Since the end of January, when federal immigration officials shuttered Tri-Valley University, an online diploma mill that officials allege operates as a front for visa fraud, the students have been in immigration limbo. Many face possible deportation.

For India's tabloidish 24-hour news channels, the plight of the students—18 of whom immigration officials fitted with radio-transmitting ankle-bracelets to discourage flight—appears to have come as a bolt from ratings heaven. After the story broke last month, TV channels devoted hours of prime time news to the alleged humiliation meted out to them by heartless American officials. Television anchors denounced the ankle-bracelets as "insensitive," "shocking" and "inhuman." A parade of irate relatives proclaimed the innocence of their kin, the insensitivity of U.S. immigration agents and the ineptitude of the Indian government.

Newspapers and websites splashed pictures of hapless Tri-Valley students on their front pages, pants helpfully rolled up for a clearer view of the offending bracelets. Adding fuel to the proverbial fire, a clueless U.S. official in Hyderabad, the Indian epicenter of the storm, described the bracelets as "hip and happening," and compared their bulk favorably with the "big, heavy silver anklets" worn by her "servants." Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna has declared the radio-tagging "unacceptable" and "inhuman" and raised it with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On Tuesday the issue came up in India's parliament.

For the U.S., basking in the afterglow of a successful visit to India by President Barack Obama in November, and gearing up for a visit by Mrs. Clinton in April, the incident signifies more than cross-cultural confusion. To Indian sensibilities, the bracelets appear less a convenient alternative to detention than a mark of second-class status. This serves as a stark reminder that India's raucous democracy—easy to admire at a distance—can be awkward and unpredictable to deal with up close.

Indian officials contend that the students hold valid visas, and should not be held responsible for the university's alleged crimes. But Tri-Valley allowed its so-called students to live anywhere in the country, and its primary draw was its apparent willingness to issue documents that allowed them to work while pretending to study. The notion that those enrolled at Tri-Valley, some of whom transferred from less flim-flammy institutions, didn't know that they were gaming the system begs credulity.

At a deeper level, however, the media hysteria around the Tri-Valley affair—involving a mere 1,500-odd students of the more than 100,000 Indians enrolled in the U.S., the largest cohort from any country—says much about middle-class India's complex relationship with the land that looms larger in its imagination than any other.

Over the past 20 years, even as economic growth has created new opportunities at home for tens of millions of Indians, the lure of the American dream has not faded. In India's cities, it's virtually impossible to find a top diplomat, civil servant, army officer or businessman without close kin in the United States. Successful overseas Indians such as PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, Time magazine's Fareed Zakaria and Nobel-prize winning Harvard economist Amartya Sen are household names in India. The idea of the all-conquering overseas Indian is as firmly embedded in the Indian imagination as another favorite trope: an ancient land rising from slumber to reclaim its rightful place at the head table of world affairs.

Against this backdrop, the Tri-Valley affair comes as a painful reminder of the persistence of another India, one that has more in common with the quiet desperation of Egypt or Mexico than with the swagger of the effortlessly bicultural Indian portrayed in everything from advertisements to Bollywood films. It brings to mind a world of anxiety about immigration status, of snaking lines outside the U.S. embassy, of youthful dreams that will be shattered if they can't be fulfilled in the West.

To be sure, India has reason to be proud of its economic achievements over the past two decades. But as the drama in Pleasanton shows, there's hardly cause for complacency. Only when Indian students stop flocking to fly-by-night schools lured by the promise of a work visa will the country's reality measure up to its self-image.

India is also obsessed with China.

 

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India is also obsessed with China.

And you are obsessed with India.

 

[Time Assassin]

You got to admit it tho, India is sucking off USA, you can pretty much see it on Bollywood. But then again every country sucks off to USA, apart from a few. I think Indains still believe places like the UK + USA are a dream place where there is money, power, freedom, etc. The truth is i reckon India has a better cluture and a better background.