[ta_vf7xjd34cc]

> A quick search didn‘t turn up any current US sanctions either.

The US and Indian governments have had bad relations for a long time. The US has the habit of weaponizing anything and everything. While not exactly sanctions, people don't forget things like PL480[1] that easily:

> Many of us still have hurtful memories of the mid-'60s when, after two successive years of savage drought, India desperately needed American wheat under the US Public Law 480 on rupee payment — and at relatively low prices because the country had no foreign exchange to buy food in the world market. Indira Gandhi had just become prime minister and chose to go to Washington on an official visit. Lyndon Johnson gave her a gushing welcome and responded to the food problem confronting her effusively, promising as many as 10 million tons of PL480 wheat. However, at an early stage the transaction turned sour.

> Infuriated by India's criticism of American bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong in the course of the Vietnam War, the irascible Texan put food shipments on such a tight leash that India literally lived from ship to mouth. With every morsel we swallowed a little humiliation. When told that the Indians were saying exactly the same thing as the UN Secretary-General and the Pope were, Johnson had retorted: "The Pope and the Secretary-General do not need our wheat."

[1] Swallowing the humiliation (http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/swallowing-the-humilia...)

[pyuser583]

Interesting. There are a lot of stories from the 1960s about us giving/trading food to India.

The US had a massive surplus, and was trying very hard not to destroy excess food.

They sent food to India, because the alternative was to let it go bad. And they would thank India for taking it.

But when diplomats realized this was happening, they tried to use it to extract concessions from India.

So India was being told “please take this food,” then “now that you’ve taken the food you owe us.”

India wasn’t exactly pure in this either.

India has been thankfully free of widespread famine since the British left. But internal controls created shortages, which were unnecessary.

India could have fed itself, but that was politically untenable, just as it was politically untenable for the US government to destroy food or stop paying farmers to overproduce.

[jeff_d_miller]

Domestic mismanagement in India can hardly be called a sanction by the U.S.

In other words, how would an independent financial system have helped India to put food on the table?

[ta_vf7xjd34cc]

> Domestic mismanagement in India can hardly be called a sanction by the U.S.

There is more to this.

The partition of India in 1947 divided Punjab in such a way that most of the fertile land went to Pakistan. Food shortages were soon a reality that would take decades to resolve.

There is also this theory that explains the partition of India in terms of the (then) looming Cold War. Creating Pakistan and supporting its claim on Kashmir prevented the USSR direct access to the Arabian Sea through Afghanistan and then India.[1][2][3]

> [Jinnah] was backed by British imperialists, notably Winston Churchill, who believed Pakistan would prove a faithful friend to the West and a bulwark between the Soviet Union and a socialist India.

> independent financial system

It is not a question of the financial system in particular, but of attitudes. The US has historically not shied away from using every available tool in order to achieve its geopolitical goals, be it finance or aid. But these actions cast long shadows that have to be dealt with generations after the people involved are long dead and buried.

[1] Who Is to Blame for Partition? Above All, Imperial Britain (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/india-pakistan-pa...)

[2] Partition through the looking glass (https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/partition-throu...)

[3] Baghdad Pact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Pact)