Rudyard Kipling, poet of British imperialism, wrote ‘O east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet.’ The India of his time harboured the notion of kala paani, whereby crossing the black waters in a journey westwards was to bring misfortune upon oneself. The interesting thing about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at New York’s Madison Square Garden — lapped up by his NRI audience — was that it rendered the boundaries of nationalism porous, so that the resources and talent of NRIs, the vast majority of whom left India for economic reasons, can be leveraged for India’s economic transformation.

In a globalised 21st century, India and the US are no longer a hemisphere apart but neighbours. Thus the impressive orchestration and charismatic connect between speaker and audience of Modi’s Madison Square rally resembled a stump speech by a US politician, both India and the US being populous, diverse and raucous democracies. The Indian dream that Modi is selling is a version of the American dream.

Moreover, if the US wields visa restrictions as a protectionist weapon against India, the proper counter is not to engage in a tit-for-tat nationalist game where India gives as good as it gets. Rather it is to ease visa restrictions on US nationals and create an atmosphere conducive to business at home so that US business is incentivised — should outsourcing restrictions become too intense — to migrate wholesale to India. It’s partially in keeping with such a creative approach that Modi announced a pending plan for visa on arrival for US nationals, while PIO cardholders can be granted visas for life.

China successfully leveraged the resources and talent of its expatriates for its economic transformation. But the key is that China changed policies at home to do this, following Mao’s disastrous political and economic experiments. Modi appears to have broken with the stiff, defensive, porcupine-like and protocol-oriented persona of Indian diplomacy abroad. That, as well as liberal visa policies which welcome expatriates ‘home’, are good first steps. Modi must now genuinely open up India to the world, as well as create an atmosphere at home which will make the world want to come. Else his successful Red Fort or Madison Square speeches may well resemble Obama’s triumphal ‘yes we can’ moment when he was elected president in 2008, all but forgotten now.

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This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.

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