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McDermott assails India caucus

Aziz Haniffa in Washington

Several congressmen of the United States take an interest in the Indian American community only to beef up their own campaign coffers, influential pro-India Congressman Jim McDermott has alleged.

McDermott, the Democratic co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, says the community is being taken for granted by many lawmakers, particularly those who claim to be members of the caucus.

In an interview he mourned that although the caucus -- with some 120-plus members -- is one of the largest of its kind, only a fraction of its members are committed to helping the community or making a tangible contribution to improving Indo-US relations.

The rest, according to him, are only big on lip service.

A case in point, McDermott says, is the number of times he and another founder member, Robert Menendez, had tried to win congressional appropriation of $120 million for earthquake relief in Gujarat early this year. They couldn't even get to first base.

Even an amendment seeking $20 million could not win the required support. Influential Republicans like Benjamin Gilman of New York and Ed Royce of California refused to co-sponsor it, since the administration convinced them that seeking such an appropriation would complicate President George W Bush's tax bill.

Gilman is chairman of the House International Relations Subcommittee on South Asia and Royce is the Republican co-chairman of the India caucus. Both have publicly declared that they would do everything in their power to help India deal with the aftermath of the Gujarat earthquake.

"When it's time to put your money where your mouth is, there was certain amount of reluctance from the people who are in the India caucus. I find that frustrating," McDermott said.

The Indian community, he said, should not allow itself to be taken for granted by lawmakers who had joined the caucus. Instead, they should ask them to prove their support in tangible terms.

"If lawmakers don't support an amendment or a bill, you find out who didn't support it and why, and then call them on it," said McDermott, who holds the record for the most visits to India by an American lawmaker -- 16.

"The Indian American community should get sophisticated and tell the member, 'You know, we notice you didn't vote for it' or 'Why didn't you offer the amendment when you sit on the committee that could have put it up'?"

All in all, even though he wished the caucus had been a little more successful, he is happy that there is now a "gradual recognition of the fact that we can change opinion".

For example, immediately after Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage returned from a visit to India to brief New Delhi on the president's proposed national missile defence system, he briefed the caucus.

He also said the administration was committed to lifting the economic sanctions imposed on India after the latter's May 1998 nuclear tests.

Robert Blackwill, the new US ambassador to India, met caucus members before he left for New Delhi to discuss his agenda and pledged to further improve the US-India relationship.

McDermott said the administration "has by and large been at least as friendly, if not more so, than the previous administration was toward India. It hasn't required us to do quite as much to urge them forward as we did in the past."

At the same time, he said, the fact that India was still under the post-nuclear tests sanctions -- which the caucus hoped would be lifted soon -- even as the administration keeps talking about an envisaged strategic relationship with India, makes such declarations an oxymoron.

McDermott and Royce have legislation circulating in Congress calling for the lifting of all sanctions imposed against India and Pakistan after their tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May 1998.

"Now it turns out that this administration is also going to impose steel sanctions or whatever they are doing -- anti-dumping sanctions -- against India. So it becomes a question of, are you serious about helping them [India] develop or not?"

Indo Asian News Service

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