Outsourcing is an issue, says Hillary

Outsourcing is an issue, says Hillary

TIMES NEWS NETWORK SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2005 03:09:39 AM

NEW DELHI: India-US trade may be flourishing but the trade deficit, which is overwhelmingly in India's favour, needs to be addressed to ensure a more equitable relationship between the two countries, Hillary Clinton said.

"This, added to the outsourcing debate in my country, could raise questions about the nature of our relations."

She is the favourite as the first-ever woman US presidential candidate for 2008. But US senator Hillary Clinton and former first lady, while addressing the India Today conclave here on Saturday evening, treated an adoring audience with some truths refreshingly bereft of rose-tinted glbuttes.

The message could not have been clearer. Open India's markets and increase Indian investment in US. This will have the happy effect, she said, of deterring the negative noises against India, that, she clarified, falls short of an anti-India sentiment.

Combining a message to a domestic consbreastuency and one of America's newest strategic partners, Hillary observed that US policy makers needed to address the fact that Americans were steadily losing jobs. The way to address this, she added, was to maintain the scientific and research edge that the US has enjoyed thus far.

Last year, Hillary authored a legislation in the senate that demanded information and data protection for outsourced jobs.

She was unapologetic about the controversy it caused in India because it was close to the hearts of Americans whose medical records and income taxes were being computed in far away India.

But it was on the nuclear issue that she gave a glimpse of a realism that India rarely buttociates with US Democrats. "We have differences on the nuclear question," she said because India's aspirations comes in conflict with US non-proliferation obligations.

But there are ways, she suggested, address India's self-interest in the nuclear field. It is a message South Block buttociates more closely with the Republicans.

The bottomline is always democracy. It was the subtext of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech on Friday, and on Saturday it was her turn to sing paeans to the largest democracies in the world - India and the US. And to welcome two of the newest to the club - Iraq and Afghanistan. "These democracies must be nurtured by us," she said, an unsubtle exhortation for India to step inside Iraq. Because ultimately, India and the US stand for "free nations and free markets."