The ABCDE of Obama's sales pitch to India

Make no mistake. US President Barack Obama was in India on a business trip.

His recent electoral losses weighed heavily on him when he stitched up deals, reportedly of some $10 billion, that would create about 50,000 jobs back home.

In this transactional world of commerce, we can hardly ask why the president of the world's biggest and most powerful economy has been reduced to a mere commercial agent. But we can, and must, ask if the nature of the business he is offering is good for us, or even for him.

Let us be clear. When President Obama came to power, he came on the promise of change.

He assured his countrymen (and all of us in faraway lands who watched with equal excitement and expectation) that he would shake the country out of its corporate grip and would make a difference in the way America runs its economy.

It was a crucial promise, made at a time when the business model his country had been exporting was revealing its nasty underbelly — from the subprime crisis in housing to greedy bankers.

But on this trip to India, the president was an agent of the same business model, which is not only bringing his country down economically, but also bringing the world to the precipice of a climate disaster.

It is this consumption-based model of market economy that needs to be deciphered and rejected.

Let's look at the ABCDE of what is at stake in the US-India trade relationship.

Image: Obama, right, toasts India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a state dinner at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on November 8, 2010.

Text: Sunita Narain, Business Standard

AP Images