Will Trump ease India’s security nightmare?

The Narendra Modi government’s hankering for H-1B US visas for Indian citizens is demeaning for any proud Indian. Such a bent of mind can be defended if the purpose is to go and work for a subsidiary or affiliate of an Indian company, thereby rendering it competitive in the face of international competition.

When foreign firms absorb the skilled, it constitutes a loss of talent to a rival. Such a brain drain is not in the national interest. Outward migration indicates a worrying failure to create jobs at home. It is for the government to incentivise Indian industry as well as foreign multinational corporations to establish shop in India, so that the workforce produced by the prestigious IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and other institutions benefit the Indian economy first and foremost. Instead—and more so in the last decade— the IITs have become factories for exportable manpower.

Rather than lament this loss, the Modi regime pats itself on the back when Indians or foreign nationals of Indian origin become CEOs of commercial giants in the US. Right now, though, Raisina Hill waits with baited breath on the shape that president-in-waiting Donald Trump’s India policy might take.

Trump’s swearing in on 20 January will mark the beginning of his second term in the White House. His ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) base opposes H-1B visas. Their contention is that foreign workers under the scheme “take away American jobs”. They also maintain, with a racist overtone, that the inflow poses a “threat to Western civilisation.”

Interestingly, the American Left are on the same page as the Far Right on the issue. US senator Bernie Sanders described the H1-B programme as a tool for corporate exploitation.

‘The main function’ he wrote, ‘is not to hire “the best and the brightest”, but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad. The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.’ This is not the first instance in the Western world of the Left and the Far Right coalescing in the interest of the white working class.

Hitherto restricted to fighting for the blue collared sector, it has now spilled over to other segments. Trump pressed pause on the granting of H-1B visas in 2020 during his previous term as president. In his second term, he may abandon his core supporters and adopt the line advocated by Elon Musk, who argued, ‘America needs talented people, and the H-1B allows the world’s top talent to live and work in the US.’

Meanwhile, the government of outgoing President Joe Biden may have extended a favour to H-1B visa holders. They are likely to be able to renew their visas without having to return to India to do so. The process is expected to roll out this year, subject to a formal notification. Indians account for the highest number of H-1B visa applicants. In 2023, 72 per cent of the 386,000 visas granted were to Indians.

The US wings of Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services are leading beneficiaries. They shore up the technology industries in the US as well as healthcare and research.

Informed sources in the Indian Foreign Service say the signs so far indicate Trump 2.0 may not be bountiful for India. Trump, like Modi, does not forget easily and is inclined to be vengeful. (Modi avoided meeting him on his visit to the US in September.) ‘Heartiest congratulations, my friend,’ tweeted Modi in response to Trump’s comeback victory in November.

The jubilation was as misplaced as the term ‘friend’ misleading. Assuming that it’s ‘America First’ rather than ‘Trump first’, India and Modi do not currently figure in the framework.

Is Modi experiencing a loss of face after proclaiming Trump a ‘friend’? Has Indian external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, been camping in America to plead with Trump’s team to send an invite to Modi— as has widely been perceived in the media? Why any self-respecting person would yearn for an invitation from Trump to be a bystander at his inauguration is inexplicable. President Xi Jinping, no friend of Trump, but a force to be reckoned with globally, was invited and—not unexpectedly—declined. Clearly, Modi is not even vishwabandhu, let alone vishwaguru.

It is of course true that right-wing politicians from various parts of the world have been invited for the occasion. Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni dropped in on Trump at his Florida home on 5 January. Whether she will come again in the same month remains to be seen. Leaks to news organisations suggest that Hungarian PM Viktor Orban and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are also among the invitees, but their attendance is yet to be confirmed.

From the time Modi (then chief minister of Gujarat) and Jaishankar (then Indian ambassador to China) stealthily befriended each other (the Intelligence Bureau had got wind of it and reported it to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh), the onus to justify the departure from a productive Indian foreign policy of genuine multi-alignment to a pro-US tilt has fallen on Jaishankar. An isolationist US position under Trump would upset the Modi– Jaishankar applecart.

While Trump is almost certainly going to engage in a tariff war with China, he could be less aggressive on Chinese expansionism. Standing up to Beijing on New Delhi’s border dispute with it has become heavily dependent on solidarity from Washington.

Will Trump continue with the priority given to this crucial issue by the Biden administration? Indeed, the extent to which QUAD—the US, India, Japan and Australia—will remain a robust counterweight to China is also in doubt.

Over and above this, it will be humiliating for Modi if he has to eat humble pie on his hardline towards Pakistan and is forced to initiate a dialogue with Islamabad. During Trump’s election campaign, and fortified by Hindu extremists in the US who normally vote for him, Trump wrote on X, ‘I strongly condemn the barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians and other minorities who are getting attacked and looted by mobs in Bangladesh…’ The proof of the pudding will be in the action he takes (or fails to take) in order to extricate India from a difficult wicket—the loss of Bangladesh as a reliable neighbour.

If successful, moves by Dhaka under its new dispensation to improve relations with Pakistan will mean almost a status quo ante to pre-1971. In other words, a potential security threat from the east in addition to the serious prevailing threats from China in the north and Pakistan in the west. Good foreign policy secures a country. In this respect, the Modi–Jaishankar duo have failed miserably. India is today surrounded by hostile or indifferent neighbours. Trump is unlikely to lose sleep over this.