It seems that — metaphorically speaking — whenever Donald Trump sneezes, India’s national parties catch a cold. Their affliction does not have to do with Mr Trump’s hurling of tariff missiles on this occasion: instead, the American president’s pronouncements on funding by the United States Agency for International Development to India, ostensibly to enhance voter turnout, has raised political temperatures in this part of the world. The controversy started when the Elon Musk-led department of government efficiency claimed it had negated a grant worth $21 million to India to facilitate voter turnout. Mr Trump repeated the charge, prompting a gleeful Bharatiya Janata Party to use the statements to target the Congress and Rahul Gandhi as emissaries of the ‘foreign hand’. But then, it was the BJP’s turn to be tripped by Mr Trump who announced at a Governors Working Session at the White House that the sum was for Narendra Modi. It was then the Congress’s turn to target its political rival, demanding that the right-wing ecosystem should be named and shamed for peddling speculative information. The plot thickened further after there were claims that the USAID money was meant for Bangladesh and not India. Now a mint fresh annual report of the finance ministry has shown that USAID had funded seven projects worth 750 million dollars in 2023-24 in India: none of these pertained to the enhancement of voter turnout. Amidst the hullabaloo, the foreign minister has assured the nation that the information put out by Mr Trump’s administration was “concerning” and that the Centre was looking into it.
The combatants in India should learn lessons from these developments. The BJP, for instance, must remember that Mr Trump — for all his professed admiration for Mr Modi — is a notoriously fickle-minded ally. Trying to score domestic political brownie points by relying on Mr Trump may land the party with egg on its face. The urge to transform development funds into political fodder is also a risky venture. India’s global aspirations, for example, are contingent upon firming up its image as a donor of international repute. According to the Observer Research Foundation, India has extended financial assistance to over 65 nations since 2000: how would New Delhi respond to charges by the recipients of India extending a ‘foreign hand’? India must institute an impartial scrutiny of the contentious information emanating from the White House. Hyperbolic rhetoric will not get the nation any closer to the truth.