Advice for Obama

That's the first thing Barack Obama needs to know about India—and it is a big reason he should have included India in his travel plans. Obama may need to work hard to fix America's battered image abroad. But not here. The United States' standing is just fine in our young, confident, urbanizing and audaciously hopeful nation.

Yes, there is widespread concern over America's handling of Iraq. But Indians are also celebrating their improved relations with Washington these days. They're appreciative of Bush, who carried forward the de-hyphenation of America's South Asia policy—finally separating "India-Pakistan"—that President Bill Clinton began during his second term.

That said, Obama should understand that the best way to keep improving ties with New Delhi would be to recognize India's aspirations. Don't patronize us by talking to us like just another "promising emerging market." In fact, never try to sermonize to us. We Indians can outsermonize anybody—even someone as articulate and convincing as Obama.

Another reason India merits Obama's attention—and a reason it's unique and so important—is that it defies two negative sentiments that today drive much of the world: anti-Americanism and Islamophobia. Both phenomena are actually declining in India these days, and for good reason. This confident country no longer fears anybody. And democratic coalition politics have ensured a healthy balance among our many different communities and groups. All coalition governments, even those led by the right, have to function with restraint, thanks to their reliance on secular parties that depend on the Muslim vote. And that has strengthened Indian secularism across the board. The steady improvement in India's relations with Pakistan, meanwhile, and the democratic developments there have also diminished Indians' anxieties about radical Islam. Obama should remember that ours is one of the only nations with a large Muslim population where the Islamic clergy has issued fatwas against terrorism and has condemned it on religious grounds.

Finally—and this may be the biggest surprise of all—Obama needs to understand that while Indians admire his remarkable story, we have our own versions to celebrate. We think our politics are better than America's at awarding a powerful political voice to victims of deprivation and discrimination. That's something Obama would have figured out had he put India on his itinerary.

Guptais editor in chief of The Indian Express.

Brazil: The Giant Down South
By Luis Fernando Verissimo

If Barack Obama came to visit Brazil—and he should—we would impress him with our bigness in everything. We might even cause him to ponder just what all this bigness and ambition means for the United States.

If Obama came, we would show him not just a good time, but a great time. He could join the biggest party on earth (Carnaval) or go to the biggest football stadium in the world (Maracaña) to watch the biggest, or at least the winningest, national team in action. We would awe Obama with our geography. We're bi-hemispherical, crossed by the equator on top and laying our feet near the South Pole. We can sweat and freeze at the same time. We occupy more than half of South America, we have the biggest river and the biggest iron-ore reserves on earth, and might just become one of the world's leading exporters of oil in the not-so-distant future. And if that doesn't work—or if our oil runs out—we will surely become the leading producer of biofuel. Our reputation for ethnic harmony is a bit undeserved but, still, ours is the biggest experiment in racial integration and miscegenation in history. We have a big, leftist (more or less) government but also a capitalist economy and are on the way to developing a big popular consumer market for our own products and for imports. We also have the widest spread between rich and poor in the world, however, along with the ugliest shantytowns and probably the worst corruption scandals. When not having fun or being awed, Obama would have much to think about. He may see us as a semitropical China, a giant stretching its limbs and demanding attention—but a different kind of attention than it got in the past. He may notice that we have Americanized, or McDonaldized, to a high degree, but notice, too, a sense in the land that it's time our bigness started to pay off and deliver on the future it promised. This might mean standing up like a giant in defiance of old attitudes and submissions. Obama might view moderate Brazil as a good ally against the radical populists popping up throughout the continent in the wake of failed neoliberal economics, or he may see us as an emerging geopolitical threat. There are people in Brazil who are sure that the United States is redeploying the Fourth Fleet to the South Atlantic just to show us who's really big. We have big ambitions—but big paranoia, too.

Verissimois a Brazilian journalist and author.

© 2008