How the Modi Government is Towing the American Line | Radhakanta Barik

Rise of rightwing politics all over the world has been encouraged by USAID, be it Egypt or India. Remember the funding of the Banana Republics? The famous American story writer O Henry coined the phrase more than a hundred years ago to describe the fictional Republic of Anchuria in the book Cabbages and Kings (1904), a collection of short stories inspired by his experiences in the Honduras, whose economy was heavily dependent on the export of bananas. In the early 20th century, the United Fruit Company, a multinational corporation, was instrumental in the creation of the banana republic phenomenon. Together with other American corporations, such as the Cuyamel Fruit Company, and leveraging the power of the US government, the corporations created the political, economic, and social circumstances, that led to a coup of the locally- elected democratic government that established banana republics in Central American countries such as Honduras and Guatemala. A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, where the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Asia is no exception.

Also don’t forget that in 1984, the US Congress approved $24 million in aid to the Contras, a paramilitary CIA outfit that operated in the Latin American countries, to destabilise Iran. Not only arms export hidden under bananas, but conditional USAID too has today become a political weapon of control over foreign countries, big and small. Also note, it is not ‘Aid’ as in assistance; it is US Agency for International Development. That the Republicans are dismantling USAID, is itself a big-screen movie unfolding bit by bit.

THE BJP AND RSS have taken money quietly from USAID to do their Hindutva politics. Now that it is out, their official and unofficial propaganda machinery is blaming the opposition party, the Indian National Congress. Their spokesmen, speaking loudly to silence the public, charged that USAID of 21 million dollars was used by the Opposition to manipulate voter turnout in the May 2024 Lok Sabha polls in India.

The Indian Express and journalist Jay Mazoomdar have shown that this sum went actually to Bangladesh and was used for supporting NGOs to destabilise the elected government in Bangladesh. The Indian state under Modi knew this was happening but used the information to create false propaganda against the Congress Party. The way they sponsored the quota reform movement in Bangladesh, (ANA movement) and the attack on the Minorities and Dalits and farmers and working class in India is self-explanatory. USAID in India plays the Saas-Bahu politics, with Saas USAID in a dominant relationship; we are using this sociological framework to explain the politics of the decade of Modi-rule (for example, the attack in UP on Urdu as a language spoken by the people of India).

USAID has not improved the economic growth of less developed countries anywhere in the world. It has increased corruption and money-laundering in the receiving state. A study conducted by leading economists show that countries receiving USAID funds have not succeeded in improving the quality of life of their citizens. On the contrary, their life has declined with the coming of foreign intervention(Mash Rahnama and two others 2017).

USAID of 21 million dollars to Bangladesh has been used for political participation in the state and helped establish an academic centre in Dhaka University as the Centre for Applied Democracy that played a destabilisation role in the state. In India, this can be called the Saas-Bohu politics. Smriti Irani’s campaigns to the Anna Hazare movement, all were financed by India’s rightwing.

Prof Ashutosh Varshney, a leading political scientist from America on India, writes in his column in The Indian Express that the Modi visit to America exposed his subordinate role. Modi belongs to the Savarkar tradition and wants to serve the imperialist forces. The economy is in bad shape. Modi wanted to save his skin by bringing home an agreement with Trump to charm the Indian middle class. He could not open his mouth regarding the handcuffing of migrant labour deported from the USA and the second plane carrying the migrant labour in chains reached Amritsar last month. He is ready to buy F 35s, which has lost its utility in India. He is ready to reduce trade tariffs to facilitate import of goods and services from America. In the present budget, there is provision for reducing the tariff for imported motorcycles and pistachios from America.

On the orders of American President Donald Trump, the American government has brought 104 Indians in a military plane and left them in India. They were allegedly living in America illegally, without any valid documents. Among them, there are 30 people from Punjab, 33 people from Gujarat and Haryana, 3 people from Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, and two from Chandigarh. It has been known that the American government has identified around 20 thousand people illegally living in the USA and has decided to catch them and bring them back to India in the coming days. Notably, the RSS, the BJP and the Modi government, who have been doing politics in the name of ‘illegal invaders’ into India, have neither supported the Indians known as ‘illegal migrants’ in America nor opposed the above action of the American government!

The intruders are not only from a particular religion or country. Most of the infiltration, whether into the USA or India, are from economically backward country or communities, in search of a better life. These Indians who have spent huge amount of money, went to the USA illegally from different religions and different States of India. They are not professional criminals or terrorists. The story of the ‘infiltrator’ who risked his life through Mexico illegally, did so when he got no opportunity for employment and economic prosperity in India. His story only illustrates the failure of The Indian government under BJP rule.

The highest number of illegal migrants have been from the most prosperous State of Gujarat, 33 Gujaratis have been returned, why did the American plane stop in Amritsar instead of going to Gujarat? When Trump came, he went to Gujarat first. Many more heads of State went to Gujarat. But now, why did the American military plane go to Punjab with Indians? The dignity of Gujarat is being questioned here. It will be seen in the future how many Gujarati are coming back as illegal migrants, and that will tell us how fake the story of Great Gujarat is.

The Modi government’s handling of migrant labour to America is not based on a perspective as both Trump and Modi do not respect ‘labour’. America has been known as respecting the human rights of people and here they failed to respect the labour in general, and migrant labour in particular. By keeping them in chains, the elite in America revive the memory of slave labour from Africa.

In India, the respect for a citizen does not exist. The way Trump behaved against migrant labour from India and other countries, shows hoe the Modi government r bowed down to American dictates which perhaps is the most humiliating one. By allowing the American military plane reaching Indian soil carrying the migrants in handcuffed and chained was the most humiliating for Indian state. This is not the foreign policy tradition of India and it is because of lack of policy affecting Modi government that such an unconstitutional transaction happened. The Supreme Court needs to take up the case and order some sort of apology and compensation to these non-criminal citizens.

Prime Minister Modi is now playing the role of a subordinate to American power. He came to Prime Ministership as a salesman and sold all public sector industry to Adani. In the process, all public sector industries have gone to the single person, his favourite industrialist. He turned into a good buyer also, by buying F 35s, the most expensive fighter plane which cannot be used in India, making the country’s economy poorer. And this year’s budget has reduced the allocations for health and education and other social sectors and increased the defence budget to satisfy the American interest. As a buyer, he is forgetting his own national interest and now he is ready to buy gas and oil from America, not Russia. This makes him a servile Prime Minister.

America has always wanted to keep India subservient.

Recall the time when, Indira Gandhi as PM went went to meet President Lyndon Johnson who humiliated her in White House and which got recorded and published in a book, Estranged Democracy, written by an American diplomat. Johnson told her, ‘You have come with a begging bowl’, as it was the time for renewing the food supply from America under PL 480. She replied, ‘ This will not happen any more’. (Dennish Kux 2002) She came back to India and searched for the best agricultural scientist, M S Swaminathan; and gave him and then Agriculture Secretary M R Sivaraman and C Subramaium, then Minister of Agriculture the responsibility for reviving the India’s agriculture which resulted in the country becoming a food-surplus state in 1971, which took just three years.

Prime Minister Modi does not give any interview with the journalists in India, but he gave an interview in the White House of America to a question regarding Adani and he answered that he ‘is concerned with each family in India’. In his eleven years of rule, the bottom fifty-five percent of families have stagnant income. With the rise in inflation, their income has fallen, and their life has turned into disarray because of economic difficulties and they have been pushed to eat only rice or chapati without any vegetable; so much for vegetarianism as an ideology of the ruling party. Modi does not stand these fifty-five percentages of families.

By giving income tax exemption up to 12 lakhs, he has pushed the middle class into a precarious situation, they have been pushed up the ladder without resources. The truth is, the Modi government stands for these ten percentages of rich and powerful, where Adani is the leader.

Lookout for the Modi-Trump kowtow in the next five years.