Devyani Khobragade

14,827 murders                     i.e one every 40 minutes

84,376 rapes                          i.e one every 7 minutes

3,54,520 robberies                i.e one every 90 seconds

760,739 assaults                    i.e one every 45 seconds

89,75,438 property crimes   i.e 17 crimes every second

Which country do you think this is?!!

This is the United States of America!!!! (as listed by FBI for 2012) and this does not even include crime stats of  other law enforcement agencies/ unreported crimes!!!

Now, take a look at Ms Devyani's case in the above context. Prima facie, her offence (even if true) does not fall into any of the above types.  It is not at all serious that she has to be arrested in the manner she was. (Here, I am not writing about that handcuffing/stripping incident anymore because enough has already been written and seen on that). I want to analyse this situation by the reactions of the US state department spokes woman Ms Marie Harf who said the following - 

"...... we don't want this (incident) to define our relationship going forward and don't think that it will........ if you look throughout the region, if you look at Afghanistan, if you look at energy issues, economic issues, we have a whole host of things we work together on........And those are very important and shouldn't be derailed by this incident. And that's why, again, we are putting the process forward. We're setting that aside..........the relationship with India is incredibly important.....It's vital, and that's what we're focused on ........There's a lot of business we have to get done together, a lot of issues we work very closely on economically, diplomatically, and that's what's important to us and that's what's important to do moving forward, and I have no reason to think that that won't be the case."  Very Well said, Ms Harf, you echo the sentiments of over a billion indians and we truly like to believe what you say. If that be so, then why are you trying to scuttle it all, by sticking to a fraudulent visa charge against a career diplomat? Are you trying to say that the United States is 'holier than thou' and that there is no crime in your country?! if you have any such notions please have a look at your own crime stats on top.  This is without even mentioning the violation of various Indian rules by your Diplomats in India!!! It is rather bizarre that you are trying to put an end to a relationship which had taken years to fructify over something as silly as 'underpaying a nanny (which itself is not proven yet)', in the course of which you have grossly ill treated a woman diplomat and deliberately airlifted indian citizens against whom cases are pending in the Indian courts!!!  How do you expect us to trust you and treat you as our partner?  Do you think protecting the rights of one nanny (if at all she is the victim) is larger than saving thousands of jobs (from the defence/other deals india is ordering)?   Either you have no care for what India thinks or someone is deliberately trying to sabotage this budding relationship.   Anyway, to really take this relation ship forward, you need to cut down on the rhetoric of how important ties with India are and do some actual work on ground i.e grant of her accreditation  and offer an unconditional apology.