“India-U.S. relationship is a defining strategic partnership and an evolving one, and not transactional”, said Pradeep S. Mehta, Secretary General, CUTS International at a webinar on US India relations organized to generate inputs for both the governments in the context of the upcoming visit of India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi to the USA.
“It’s an opportune moment for Shri Modi to raise the need to revitalise multilateralism, particularly trade multilateralism, with President Biden”. He added that both India and the U.S. are key stakeholders in the rules-based multilateral trading system, and need to lead from the front and work together to find solutions.
Among a distinguished audience, former Indian Ambassador to the USA, Ms. Meera Shankar, New Delhi; Ms. Seema Sirohi, Columnist, ET, Washington DC, and Michael Kugelman, Director, South Asia Institute, Wilson Centre, Washington DC, participated in an illuminating panel discussion, moderated by Ms. Jyoti Malhotra, Senior Consulting Editor, The Print, New Delhi.
Meera Shankar, observed that we have a formal strategic partnership with the U.S., but it’s taken a while to build this degree of trust. From buying no defence equipment to gradually buying equipment and now moving towards changing the norms and regulations which apply to India, gives it the status of one of the U.S.’s closest friends.
“The deal for GE 414 engines to be manufactured in India, with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is a great achievement”, she added.
“The initiative on critical and emerging technologies in areas such as semiconductors, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, telecommunications and space, and renewable energies would be key element driving this partnership”.
Michael Kugelman, stated that “the U.S. India partnership did not begin in the early 1990s, meaning there have been periods prior to that when you had pretty strong partnership as well”. He elaborated this by stating two instances to support his argument, the famous Eisenhower visit to New Delhi in 1959 and the JFK Administration's support for India during the 1962 war with China.
As a strategic thinker, Kugelman mentioned that the tech areas have become one of the biggest growth areas of this partnership, as also with climate change, clean energy, along with higher education exchanges, science research from space issues to cybersecurity.
Furthermore, he mentioned that the U.S.’s definition of a strategic relationship is one with a high degree of defence cooperation, intelligence sharing, with trust and goodwill, and hence U.S.-India does have a strategic partnership.
Seema Sirohi, who recently published a book “Friends with Benefits: The India-US Story”, elaborated that the Biden administration has taken forward the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific Policy.
Sirohi observed that “Finally, the Americans are going to actually help India develop a defence industrial base. This is very, very important”.
Suggesting that this relationship is not uni-dimensional; it’s a broad based one where you have a business relationship, the NRI community and the bipartisan consensus. All have sought to build a relationship with India to a greater degree.
Towards the end of her remarks, in context of upcoming State Visit, Sirohi stated that transfer of technology up to 60% will be done in stages, and it will not be overtime. To think of 100% tech transfer is highly unreasonable as no country is going to transfer the inner core technology, the metallurgy, as everything is very advanced. However, the MoU that will be announced during the upcoming PM’s visit would further elaborate on it.
In conclusion, while thanking all speakers and audience, Mehta said “we do hope that the U.S. and India can cooperate in assisting African countries under a trilateral development model, with participation of the civil society, business chambers, academia etc., for the various issues which can help them to grow and reduce poverty”, as most of the African countries are now suffering from huge debt due to conditionalities imposed by China which has invested large amount through loans in African infrastructure.
This virtual session, moderated excellently by Jyoti Malhotra, saw enthusiastic participation, with over forty participants joining to hear experts deliberate on these issues. Among the illustrious participants, who joined the webinar, included Shri Harsh V. Shringla, Chief Coordinator for India’s G20 Presidency, who has been India’s Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to the U.S.
Furthermore, Capt. Michael Farmer, US Navy, Chief, Office of Defense Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, who also offered brief remarks during the Question and Answer session. The Q&A session which followed the panel discussion saw the enthusiastic audiences from different time zones raising pertinent questions.
With its headquarters in Jaipur, India, CUTS International works out of Washington DC, and has regional centres in Accra, Lusaka and Nairobi covering West, Southern and East Africa. Besides them, it has centres in Hanoi, Geneva and New Delhi. More at: https://cuts-international.org/
For more information, please contact:
Purushendra Singh, +91-80058-53806, prh@cuts.org
Vijay Singh, +91-80766-19084, vs1@cuts.org