Admittedly our role is only that of stargazers; we can in no way affect the outcome of the presidential poll in the United States of America. Doris Day could not have been more right: whatever will be, will be.

That does not, though, mean we should not do some prior thinking on how to deal with the possible consequences of the way Americans vote on the Tuesday following the first Monday next November. Whichever party or candidate wins, he or she will not be able to escape from the quarantine of campaign commitments. Once the campaign reaches fever pitch in the coming weeks, candidates will be under increasing pressure to adopt particular positions on major issues, from which it would be difficult to wriggle out later, by poll day, the candidates could discover that they are left with no scope for manoeuvrability.

Two concerns have dominated the campaign rhetoric. One is, of course, Iraq. For dear life, all candidates, including the already-anointed Republican candidate, John McCain, have agreed that enough has been enough, everybody disliked war, the flower of American youth must not any longer be wasted in the Iraqi wilderness. Polemics have centred round the method and schedule of bringing the troops back home, the pledge to wind down the war would nonetheless be seen as nearly impossible to repudiate. But one never knows. Perhaps a lot of meaning is tucked in under the expression “without jeopardizing the geopolitical interests of the great American nation”; seasoned politicians continue to mutter it even as they declare their intention to end the grisly Iraq chapter.

The other major issue is the looming economic depressions. The ‘sub-prime’ disaster in the mortgage market is, everybody appears to agree, only a symptom; the overriding problem is the sluggishness in the American economy reflected in dipping rates of growth of the gross domestic product and employment. The Federal Reserve bond, presiding over the country’s monetary apparatus, knows prima facie only one way of handling things: to adjust up and down interest rates. The prime rate has been lowered in recent months a tedious number of times. It is not altogether inconceivable that the resolve once expressed by a past chairman of the Federal Reserve Board — he would bring the prime rate down to the level of zero if that would save the American economy — might well be rendered real by his present successor. Even that most extreme measure could be of little avail. For meanwhile, business process outsourcing has cast a shadow across the nation’s landscape. If to the American entrepreneur an open economic system offered the opportunity to outsource work whereby costs could be markedly pared down, the crisis in employment would persist irrespective of whatever happened to the interest rate structure. Low interest rates will encourage the induction of relatively more capital-intensive technology, while the supply of trained personnel to operate such technology could be ensured by persuading the authorities to issue generous H1B visas. The thrust of the presidential poll campaign has been directed against both BPO and H1B visas, with politicians crying hoarse for a return to a non-liberal regime; leaders of the badly scarred American working class have been shouting the most. Not surprisingly, proposals about how to restore for domestic workers the estimated three million jobs the Bush administration has exported out of the country have held centrestage in the campaign debates.

After the dust has settled down with the swearing in of the new president, politicians on both sides of the political divide will gradually go along with a cautious, ‘pragmatic’ schedule of retreat from Iraq under some kind of a formula that would allow the Americans to save their face. Drafting such a formula, no doubt, is more easily said than done. The world’s mightiest power cannot all of a sudden distance itself from its long held perception of objective reality; the status quo of being the world’s mightiest power cannot, after all, be allowed to be disturbed.

Questions will be raised on whether Iraq is to be left either in a vacuum or to anarchy, and whether either alternative is reconcilable with the role and responsibilities history has destined for the US. Therefore, after the new president, whatever his political affiliation, had taken measure of the situation, some fudging in the commitment on Iraq is most likely to take place, and this without raising too many hackles in any quarters.

All the greater reason to expect that greater attention will be riveted on the pre-poll commitments on economic issues. The cry of saving the jobs of American youth will grow shriller. Pressure will intensify to close loopholes in trade laws to prevent placement of orders on foreign firms on work that could be as competently done at home, never mind if at higher costs. In case necessary, some tax relief may be considered for firms offering extra consideration to domestic workers. Penalty for breach of legislation enjoining preference to domestic employees, could be stiffened too. There could also be a drastic reduction in the number of H1B visas issued each year.

How will all this affect India? The fastest growing among our industries is the information technology-related services. Many of them depend for as much as 90 per cent or more of their activities on orders flowing in from the US. A substantial part of India’s high rate of growth of GDP, touching more recently almost 9 per cent per annum, has a strong link with the high rate of growth in IT services. Suppose a severe contraction occurs in the activities in the IT sector following the ushering in of the new administration in the US next year. The spin-off could be a major setback for our GDP growth too. Whether such a possibility would turn into a probability can only be speculated on at this moment. What is however obvious is that an interdependent global system has its positive as well as flip sides. Foreigners can offer us bliss; excessive attachment of foreigners can also bring problems in its train.

Even in a world ruled by neo-liberal ideology, economics does not decide everything. Just because in an international framework of costs and returns, our software industry has proved to be a world-beater, we cannot expect the Americans to favour us perpetually, if to do so would hurt the interests of their own workers. Economic calculations cannot afford to ignore the desideratum of national interests.

Should not we at least prepare ourselves for the contingency of a sudden shrinkage in the demand from the US for our IT-related services? If we have to maintain the momentum of our GDP growth, we need to look for a substitute commodity or service to fill the space the IT sector would be forced to vacate. Do we have the faintest notion where to look for it? In case we have not a clue in that regard, we would have to fall back on growth induced by demand germinating within the domestic economy. That would however call for a drastic restructuring of income and assets distribution, including widespread land reforms. This is where China has scored over us. China’s export boom is pivoted on exports of commodities, not so much on outsourcing. That apart, it accomplished one of the most thoroughgoing programmes of land reforms the world has ever seen before it set on the road to export-led growth. It did not put the cart before the horse; we did.