After the virtual decimation of the Congress party in the 2014 LokSabha elections in India to vote in a live-wire Narendra Modi, and the lower and middle classes defeating the establishment in the Brexit vote for Great Britain to pull out of the European Union, the convincing win that underdog Donald Trump has achieved in the American presidential polls appears no flash in the pan.
There were indeed the most powerful of forces arrayed against Trump — there was the politician-businessman nexus, a print and electronic media that viewed Trump with a jaundiced eye and a people who pollsters viewed as being prisoners of the past, wary of change per se. Trump and Hillary virtually pounced at each other when they were on the same stage and made no bones of their hatred of each other. The electoral campaign was perhaps the worst in American history with both candidates hitting below the belt repeatedly.
Many of the positions that Trump took will be on scrutiny today and the newly-elected president will have a diverse, sometimes quaint constituency, to satisfy. Take the case of Trump’s antipathy towards Muslims .Ten months after he announced that he’d ban all Muslims from entering the country, it’s unclear if that policy still stands — it’s either been expanded to include or limited just to people from countries with a history of terrorism.
The problem with Trump has been that he shifts his stand on issues every now and then. When he is President, every statement of his, every position taken would be dissected. Will he continue to suit the convenience of the audience or would he be consistent and coherent? Only time will tell.Trump says he will deport millions of illegal immigrants but he has not ruled out creating a pathway to citizenship. He’ll build a wall with Mexico, pay for the said wall, but later he’ll get reimbursed by Mexico, he later said.
What concerns the ethnic Indian community most is the immigration issue. On that, the ethnic community sought assurances from Trump but he was cleverly evasive. The proof of the pudding would indeed lie in its eating. But it is heartening that the Indian community did not put all its eggs in one basket. Immigrant Indians are a fairly powerful lot in the US and while there was a section that cultivated Hillary Clinton, there was also a sizeable section that was on the right side of Trump.
The President-elect of the United States has said in the past that India-US ties will have a “phenomenal future” with his government, but he’s also said that H1B visas were “decimating” US workers. We would have to wait and see which Trump Indian professionals will get to see post-January 20, 2017 when he assumes the Presidency. H1B visas are, of course, used by US companies to hire skilled workers from India and other countries. In October last year, Trump said he was in favour of bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, as long as they come legally.
Then in March this year, he averred: “We need highly skilled people in this country and if we can’t do it, we get them in…And in Silicon Valley we absolutely have to have.” Later that same month, Trump even specifically mentioned Indians while saying smart foreign students educated in the US should be allowed to remain there. “You know, they go to Harvard, they are first in their class and they’re from India they go back to India and they set up companies and they make a fortune and they employ lots of people and all of that,” Trump said.
India’s $146 billion IT industry depends heavily on the US government’s H1B programme. Earlier this year, the US government was believed to have received a staggering 2,50,000 H1B visa applications for the 2017 financial year (a number significantly higher than the cap of 65,000), mostly from Indian IT firms or from companies with a major presence in India.
Diplomatically, hopefully, there would be no change from the new American administration on support for India in containing China strategically and the push that Barack Obama gave to strategic Indo-American ties would continue. This would apply also to India’s bid to secure a seat on the UN Security Council. Though it is too early to predict how the US administration under Trump would be towards Pakistan, the chances are that there would be a further cooling off of ties with Islamabad and a surge in Indo-US ties.
The Economist magazine had recently rated Trump winning the U.S. elections as the third biggest source of global risk and gave the event the same impact score as that of the rise of jihadi terrorism, currency depreciation, and a clash of arms in the South China Sea. Indeed, Trump’s presidency has the potential to be a total disaster for global trade and a recovering, yet fragile global economy, the authoritative British magazine said.
But surprises do happen especially when the expectations from an incumbent are so low. The future will unravel the mysteries of the Trump presidency for India and the world at large. One can only keep one’s fingers crossed that the fallout would be a pleasant surprise.
