Obama after addressing MPs in the Central Hall of Parliament as Singh looks on. (Reuters)

New Delhi, Nov. 8: Finally, explicit admonition of Pakistan for harbouring terrorists and a charming invitation to India to the global high table.

But the silken glove of concessions President Barack Obama held out to rippling applause in the Central Hall of Parliament had a wagging finger to it: with leadership come responsibilities, fulfil them as we would have you do.

After two days of tiptoeing around Pakistan and the terror infrastructure, Obama chose his interface under the grand dome of democracy as the moment to turn forthright on India’s urgent concern. “We will continue to insist to Pakistan’s leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had dropped tangential hints earlier in the day that India expected more of Obama, saying, in the latter’s presence, that dialogue with Pakistan would remain frozen until it halted “terror-induced coercion”.

Here was redress, impeccably suited, unambiguously voiced. The P-word, the T-word and the M-word all duly calibrated to invoke the C-word: cheering. Of which there was a fair bit this evening as the President indulged and extolled India until he had brought the gathering to such a high, he was able to casually slip in the bill.

Having waited for the thunder to subside on his smartly open-ended nod to India’s P-5 ambitions — “In the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member” — Obama immediately turned to remind his gleeful hosts there will be a price to pay.

“Now let me suggest,” he said to an audience already quite lured to Obama’s easy hypnotism of words, “that with increased power comes increased responsibility. The United Nations exists to fulfil its founding ideals of preserving peace and security and advancing human rights.” Bluntly put: The permanent seat is some way off, meantime start proving to us you fit the bill.

Before anyone had had a chance to divine what he was leading up to, he had clipped on the caveats — the nuclear brinkmanship of Iran and the suffocation of democracy in Myanmar.

On both counts, Obama appeared to suggest, India had been remiss.

On both counts, India must now come to play a role if it seeks a leadership role in the world. He was, in fact, prepared to be uncharacteristically blunt.

“When peaceful democratic movements are suppressed — as in Burma —then the democracies of the world cannot remain silent. For it is unacceptable to gun down peaceful protesters and incarcerate political prisoners decade after decade. It is the responsibility of the international community — especially leaders like the United States and India — to condemn it.

“If I can be frank, in international fora, India has often avoided these issues.”

To many, the US President’s exhort on supporting democracy — probably made with an eye on his domestic constituency that has vocal views on Myanmar — rang a bit hollow.

Successive American governments having underwritten dictatorships across the world in the name of US national interest: a slew of Latin American states, Saudi Arabia and sundry repressive princedoms in West Asia, and nearer home, military regimes in Pakistan and, of course, the Hamid Karzai regime in Afghanistan which is widely alleged to have “stolen” the recent election.

As Obama prepares to leave India tomorrow morning, he appears to have won hearts but not too many heads in India. The fulsome praise he showered on the country may have struck a chord with the people. But the mood was a bit downbeat in the foreign policy establishment, which was especially stung by the US President’s democracy “lecture” vis-à-vis Myanmar.

The recurring theme of Obama’s Central Hall discourse — and indeed, all along his three days here — was that India was “no longer emerging, it has already emerged”.

But having emphatically made that pleasing diagnosis to Indians, he was clearly wooing them to a worldview as seen from the US deck. “Promoting shared prosperity, preserving peace and security, strengthening democratic governance and human rights — these are the responsibilities of leadership,” Obama argued. “And, as global partners, this is the leadership that the United States and India can offer in the 21st century.”

On the balance of the current trip, the senior partner may have taken more than it has given the junior although Obama was loath to admit that, notwithstanding an overwhelming bias in the balance of trade towards the US.

Asked what India had got in return for the business deals struck in Mumbai — worth $10 billion and an estimated 53,000 jobs to the US — the President told a news conference:

“Look, we are matched up in a way that it allows for an enormous win-win potential. We need the jobs at the moment, you need the technologies. Your people can use those technologies to create profitable business and trade models.”

Part of America’s come-hither tactics — although it is also a logical fallout of the strategic partnership sealed as “indispensable” between Singh and Obama in the valedictory joint statement — was a key strategic agreement to explore joint safeguarding of “areas of sea, air and space beyond national jurisdiction” in the interest of international security and prosperity.

Although generally welcoming of what he heard from Obama, former external affairs minister and BJP leader Jaswant Singh saw a clear effort by the US to tug India — economically vital and geopolitically critical — closer and subtly dovetail it into US economic and geo-strategic objectives.

“It is clear that the Americans expect support in return for what they are offering and what they might,” Singh said. “It is not just about Iran. It is a fact of life that in the UN we have probably voted along with the US only a little over 20 per cent of the time. Clearly they want that changed.”

Kanti Bajpai, who teaches international relations at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, too appeared not terribly taken with Obama’s ungrudging praise for India and its new place in the world.

Of his democracy lesson to India, Bajpai said: “Well, he is not doling out unconditional goodies. He is also probably telling his home audience, ‘look, I sought guarantees in return for what I promised India’.”

But former ambassador G. Parthasarathy played true to the edgy hardliner image he has on foreign policy issues. “Whatever it is, the US cannot suddenly expect us, like Great Britain, to begin clicking our heels and saying, ‘yes sir, no sir’.”

Obama, on the evidence of his measure-for-measure, step-by-step choreography, isn’t a man in a terrible rush.