Hindu art of double hedging against China

[FarCenter]

By M K Bhadrakumar

Although destined to remain in fine print, an Indian "discovery" as to what prompted the United States last week to offer it futuristic, radar-evading fighters has laid bare the countries' "defining partnership" for the 21st century.

Put simply, a miniscule group of avant-garde truth diggers among India's well-heeled and smug community of defense analysts came up with a startling find last week involving the deal. It seems the US was making virtue out of dire necessity.

Robert Scher, US deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, announced on November 3 that while India had not requested information on its fifth-generation fighter, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the US was making a unilateral invitation for sales as an "example of the high regard that we hold for India's military modernization".

In good measure, the Pentagon drafted an extraordinary nine-page report to the US Congress and swiftly publicized it, which offered, "Should India indicate interest in the JSF, the United States would be prepared to provide information on the JSF and its requirements … to support India's future planning."

The initial speculation was that the US was making a last-minute effort to gatecrash India's mega tender for the purchase of 126 multi-role combat aircraft, from which Delhi has "disqualified" the original American bids of F-16 aircraft. However, the analysts' "discovery" is that the US has desperately sought Indian participation in the JSF's development as the program faces unaffordable rising costs, with a price tag estimated at $150 million per aircraft. In sum, the JSF has become a white elephant and, hopefully, cross breeding it with the Indian black elephant might just about make its uncertain progeny probably airworthy as a beast of burden.

The tragi-comic episode exposes an aspect of the US-India "partnership" hardly glimpsed by Indian pundits, namely, the desperate need for the US to conjure up an ideology-driven relationship that enables it in real terms to boost its exports to the Indian markets - the latter being one of the few world markets today enjoying growth prospects of around 7-8% in its gross domestic product (GDP).

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MK11Df01.html

[msongs]

1. "...unaffordable rising costs..." = corporate criminals and congress that refuses to say NO.

In the real world if you bid on a job you have to honor your bid. In the military world a bid is nothing but a number on a paper that is going to be ignored with the impunity that only thieves have