His Capitol Hill-based event managers had made it amply clear well before the United States president boarded the 'Air Force One' on the auspicious Deepavali eve on his maiden exploratory mission to India on business and bi-lateral, regional and global issues that the principal purpose of his visit was to hard-sell US exports of goods and services - a step termed as 'reverse outsourcing' by many — to bolster order books of American companies to create jobs in America for Americans. Normally, such official statements about the goal of a visit by the head of a state would appear to be highly undiplomatic, if not brazen. Diplomacy is, in good part, about commerce. But, the latter rarely occupies the driver's seat in diplomacy.

Unfortunately, the US has never been admired particularly for good diplomatic skills. Fresh from a stunning defeat at the mid-term poll losing control of the House of Representatives in the face of a record domestic unemployment rate, double dip recession and budget deficit, Barack Hussein Obama's advisors thought it right to project his trip to India as basically a job hunting mission for the benefit of unemployed Americans and let the US electorates, who ultimately pay for his expensive visit, know about it in no uncertain terms. Obama was being built as a US business brand ambassador first and a diplomat later. It would appear Obama had innocently swallowed the bait even at the risk of being seen in a somewhat poor light before educated Indians. At this moment, he is more concerned about his image in America and what he can do for those hopeless Americans than building his diplomatic stature in India. Maybe, Obama was just being honest since he had nothing much to offer to India to foster a better strategic alliance with his hosts which would upset the USA's traditional ally, Pakistan, and anger China, America's biggest trade partner cum tormentor.

One somewhat hidden business agenda of the Obama trip, which was subtly pursued by his team member and treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, was to make the Indian government open the financial sector for foreign control, meaning majority American participation. Everyone knows about the US stranglehold over the global banking, insurance and financial markets. Although American financial institutions and their underlings are in full control of the Indian stock market, they are yet to succeed in making a noticeable inroad into India's banking and insurance sector because of local regulatory restrictions. Despite these restrictions, assets of foreign banks such as Stanchart and HSBC have shown phenomenal growth. The government has been cautiously slow in the financial sector reform. The banking and insurance industry continues to be largely under the government control. Geithner pushed hard with his Indian counterpart to see the control is relaxed soon. If he succeeds it will be the biggest commercial achievement of the Obama visit.

Obama pushed trade deals worth US$ 10 billion, all to promote US exports to India, which would lead to the creation of at least 54,000 new jobs for Americans in America. Much of these exports are in the form of defence hardware, which will also promote the exports of spares and parts in due course. The US is a top defence equipment manufacturer-exporter. Its principal rivals are Russia, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy and, lately, China. Some of its defence equipment manufacturers are so large that they regularly feature in the list of the world's top 100 companies in terms of sales. They include Boeing, Northrop Grunmman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics. Large Indian purchase of defence equipment and arms will have a lasting impact on the US job market around the armament industry. In other areas of business to which the Obama team has sought favourable access are pharmaceuticals, manufactured products (other than defence), transportation (mainly aircraft) and clean energy (nuclear as well as non-conventional energy). The atomic reactor and equipment supply contracts promises to be really big with potential to create thousands of jobs in America as well as in India. The USA has already extracted from India what its nuclear equipment manufacturing industry wanted - limited liability of suppliers in case of reactor leaks and accidents.

Ironically, India badly needs all the items Obama carried in his export luggage - aircraft, defence hardware, arms, nuclear reactors, dual use critical components for defence and space applications, solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, new generation drugs, etc. Therefore, the impression created that Obama had hard-sold some such items to India is totally wrong. Also, the claim that these exports were meant to create new jobs in the USA is exaggerated. The size of the export trade deal and its projected impact on the US job market at the moment are, in reality, negligible although it carries a bigger future potential. The present number of unemployed Americans is close to 25 million. India-bound new US cargoes in next two-three years are projected to support only 54,000 additional jobs in America. This is hardly a big deal. In normal circumstances, they do not even deserve a mention as an example of achievement of a presidential visit. On the other hand, it created a wrong impression in India that the US president came here only to take away jobs. This is hardly true.

On the other hand, the US president gave more than what India probably expected - a scornful diplomatic message to the perpetrators of the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai. It was a very strong diplomatic decision by the US president to stay in the Taj Mahal Hotel and hold meeting at the Trident, both victims of the 26/11 terror strikes. What a beautiful way to begin a state visit, which has won the hearts of a billion-plus Indians! This strong and nice diplomatic gesture would have gotten buried under the heap of the initial loud talks of commerce and using the fast expanding Indian economy to create jobs in America if Obama did not mesmerize Indian parliamentarians with his visionary speech. It is true that Obama had nothing much to offer to India except sympathy for its difficult fight against terror, almost all alone. Yet, his open official assurance of US support for a permanent seat at the United Nations security council and to lift controls on transfer of space and missile technologies were a great gesture. Could this gesture be also linked with the US plea for lifting of the government control over India's financial sector, FDI in retail and India becoming a party to the non-proliferation regime?

Back home, Obama has failed to handle companies such as Wall Mart, the single largest reason for high US unemployment. Wall Mart, the largest US company by turnover, alone imports general merchandise worth over US$ 100 billion and mostly from China. Over 60 per cent of Wall Mart's 2009 sales income of US$ 402 billion came from dealing in imported merchandise. Companies like Wall Mart, Safeway, Super Value, Sears Holdings and Home Depot have taken away lakhs of US jobs by indulging in lavish imports of merchandise. Paradoxically, outsourcing cheap merchandise by US trading companies is all okay with the Obama administration while outsourcing IT services by other companies is not. Externally, Obama has failed to stop merchandise dumping by China by undervaluing Yuan and giving several indirect export subsidies. Even US companies, operating in China, are opposed to any American pressure on China for correction of the value of Yuan. China shows little regard to US advice on how it should manage its economy and administration. This appears to be another reason why the USA badly needs a strong presence in the fast growing Indian market to correct the imbalance.

Yet, the fact is the USA and India need each other more than ever to forge a strong economic and diplomatic alliance in their own interest. The US industry has a huge presence in India. US companies were quick to take advantage of India's economic reform and became, as a group, the largest foreign direct investor in India. The US companies occupy a very significant part of India's recent growth story. Conversely, Indian companies and Indian Americans together form the second largest investor group in the USA. Also, there exists a strong intellectual bond among students, academicians, the scientific community, technologists, management experts, financial wizards and artists and performers of the two countries. If nothing else, Barack Hussein Obama used his India visit for further cementing these growing areas of human relationship between the two vibrant democracies. Obama fully availed himself of the opportunity to be seen as a crusader of change and present himself as a new generation statesman with substance. (IPA Service)