Sarah Palin curries favour with the Indians

"Ooh look! There's India"

Sarah Palin has left Alaska to visit India, a place she definitely can't  see from her kitchen window. She's been chatting up the high and mighty at dinners, galas and conclaves. The Indians seem mightily impressed, but then they are not given to rubbishing people they don't know. Mrs Palin is giving them her cookie charm offensive with such lines as "There is so much in common between India and the US" and "Our ties and bonds are deep. They are driven by free people and free markets and not just by political summits". I doubt if many Americans sit up each morning in bed and think that Uncle Sam has deep ties with India. As for free people and free markets, the vast majority of Indian people scrape by without being driven anywhere.

She loftily tells her audience, "Relations between India and the US are key to our world relations, regardless of who is president". They are expected to interpret this as putting them on the top table. But in reality it's all rather gauche. In fact, it's totally erroneous. The United States isn't going to consult India on everything. It is not key to realpolitik at all. No, far more realeconomik. But she may have thought this too crude a political step to take.

"America has long been famous for (its) rags-to-riches story. Today, India too has the same story. India is no longer a struggling economy." It's true in parts. But mostly untrue. But it sounds great, doesn't it? America has been a mixed bag of a story as has India. Certainly there were a few in rags but most Americans, whether of the colonial sort or the republican sort, have managed quite well. Indians on the other hand have two economies. One for the well-to-do, with many millionaires and the other, much larger, for the rest. Dolly Parton likes to say "we were dirt poor" and she probably exemplifies Palin's comments, but Parton is in the tiny minority. Even the Pilgrim Fathers had more going for them than rags to walk about in.

Sarah Palin means a lot to a lot of people, but does she really mean what she says, says what she means or just says it anyway because she thinks it is so? If she ever did win the presidency I can't think she would make a great president. More a homespun one with ready quip for every eventuality.

Posted in: India,Presidential Election 2012,Sarah Palin