The Power of Usefulness

The Power of Usefulness

1991 8 August 8-9 The Power of Usefulness (545) As far back as July of last year, Mr. Bhabin Sen Gupta, a resident correspondent of the Hindustan Times in Moscow published detailed report on the USSR entitled, ‘A New USSR is emerging.’ (July 20, 1990). Mentioning the changes taking place in the USSR, he concludes:

“An outstanding Soviet specialist in international affairs told me that the United States would not be the first love of the U.S.S.R . ‘The first love will be united Europe. And then Japan, the U.S. and Canada.’ What about India?’ I asked with a mixture of surprise and amusement. ‘India is special’ the academician placidly replied. ‘India is not our first, or second, or third love. It is our love-for-ever,” (p. 1).

For the last forty years, our government has been making every effort to convince us that the USSR is our greatest friend. But the Russian specialist’s polite side-stepping of the issue shows that the USSR has placed its relationship with India in a purely formal category. The reason for this change of attitude is very simple. First the USSR needed us. Now it no longer needs us. In the politics of cold war, Russia used India to counter the USA. Now, after the peace treaty between the two countries, the politics of confrontation have come to an end, and, with that, India too has lost its importance in the eyes of the USSR. Now, to the USSR, only those countries matter which can help it in its economic development by providing it with modern technology. In that field, it is Europe and Japan-not India-which can produce this technology.

The secret of being important, whether to an individual or to a community, lies in the ability to fulfill others’ needs. Any other basis besides this is unrealistic and artificial and will collapse with the first puff of wind.

The Hindustan Times of December 28, 1990, has published another report by Mr. N.C. Menon, Indian journalist residing in Washington, in which he ‘writes: It is not generally known that when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited India, the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, had suggested closer cooperation between India, China and the Soviet Union as a friendly counterpoise to the US giant (and perhaps to the emerging European conglomerate). President Gorbachev responded with brutal frankness that what they desperately needed was new technology, and neither China nor India could give them that (p. 13).

Over the last forty years, the USSR had come to regard the ‘Capitalist West’ as its arch enemy and ‘Socialist India’ as its friend. But, with long experience, it became apparent that it had nothing to gain from India, whereas the ‘Capitalist’ west could make a significant contribution to its developments. So it discarded India and began to adopt a friendly stance towards the west, overlooking in the process all the causes for grievance it had formerly held against it.

In this way, the ‘capitalist’ countries conquered their greatest enemy by dint of sheer usefulness. Whereas Socialist India’s inability to offer concrete advantages resulted in the loss of its greatest friend.

This is the real secret of success in the modern world. It is purely and simply a matter of usefulness, and is not to be achieved by the erection of great monuments of fine words.