Trump with the trigger

Trump threatening to pull the trigger might be just what is needed to wake up India's self-congratulatory establishment from its headline-managing fantasies

- SHEKHAR GUPTA

Is the arrival of Donald Trump and the breathless rise of Trumpism a good or a bad thing for India? His song from the day he moved into the White House has been, "Everybody has robbed us, friend or foe." Since then, he's been relentlessly targeting friends first — Europe on strategic and defence issues, Canada, Mexico and, of course, India, "the tariff king," on trade.

Here's my short answer: This change in Washington is like a gun held to India's head, with Mr. Trump's finger on the trigger. It is also the best thing that could happen to India. Sounds nutty? Please indulge me for a few minutes as I make my case.

As with any nation-state of some size, and even more so for a democracy, politics, and economics go hand in hand. In normal times, political leadership should determine the direction of a nation's economy. In India, that "normal" has had indifferent results most of the time.

The two moments when India carried out substantive reforms, it had a gun held to its head. The first, with the balance of payments crisis (often misstated as bankruptcy) and the need to go to the IMF in 1991, and then, during the global sanctions after Pokhran-2 in 1998. Mr. Trump threatening to pull the trigger will be the third. It is just what was needed to wake up India's self-congratulatory establishment from its headline-managing fantasies.

A significant move that opened the door for the stock market listing of PSUs and ultimately privatization also came in this period.

This done, India had to wait for its next gun-to-the-head moment, Vajpayee government's Pokhran-2 tests in 1998, and the avalanche of sanctions and rebuke from the US and its allies, from Europe to Japan and Australia.