There may be no big-ticket “deliverables” right away, but some of Washington’s leading South Asia experts believe that the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to help repair and kick-start the India-US partnership.
If anything, the visit presents both countries “a golden opportunity to repair their faltering partnership”, says Carnegie Endowment’s Ashley Tellis who, as an official in the Bush administration, played a key role in negotiations leading to the landmark civil nuclear deal.
Tellis, the Mumbai-born Indian-American policy wonk, wants Modi to “charm” American business with policy changes that will liberate the Indian economy on multiple levels. As he puts it, “The stakes are high, even if the circumstances today are not particularly propitious.”
If Modi can convince the American private sector to transfer capital, technology and best practices as part of their investments in India, he will gain exactly the resources that he needs to achieve his goal of transforming India, Tellis writes in a report just ahead of the Prime Minister’s arrival in New York on Friday.
One of Modi’s key engagements in New York will be his breakfast meeting with CEOs of 11 American corporate giants such as Boeing, General Electric, Google and Goldman Sachs. He will also have another key business interaction with leaders of the US India Business Council in Washington.
In recent weeks, there has been considerable enthusiasm on Modi’s “Make in India” push with the promise to make the terms attractive for foreign investors and replace the bureaucratic red tape with a “red carpet”.
Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution, speaks of the hope in the United States that the Modi Government can deliver. “There is also optimism in Washington that the overall India-US relationship can be broadened, deepened and re-energised,” write Talbott and Tanvi Madan, Director of Brookings’ India Project, in a preview of the upcoming Modi-Obama summit.
If the Obama administration sees the election of a majority Government with Modi at the helm as an opportunity to take the relationship to the next level, the American private sector is hopeful of a better business climate in India with the new Government tackling reforms and reinvigorating the economy, says the Brookings memo.
At the same time, it cautions that both in the US Government and business, there is also concern that some political and bureaucratic obstacles will prove insurmountable, raising questions whether the Indian potential can be translated into performance.
“Modi needs to convince his audience that he will expeditiously do the three things that are necessary to welcome increased foreign direct investments,” writes Tellis in the Carnegie report, mooting policy reforms to enlarge free markets in India, simplifying bureaucratic procedures and protecting investments through fair, effective and transparent procedures.
On the American side, Tellis looks for decision to partner with New Delhi on developing India’s next-generation aircraft carrier, to sell India unconventional oil and gas, and permit US companies to use Indian space launch services.
He also expects the US to possibly accelerate its efforts to complete India’s integration into the multilateral nonproliferation regimes and decide to deepen meaningful cyberdefense cooperation with India.
Daniel Twining, Senior Fellow for Asia at the German Mashall Fund of the United States says that Obama and Modi should embrace an agenda that strengthens their role as democratic and economic counterweights to growing global disorder.
“Refreshingly, Mr Modi has said all things are possible between India and America - even a strategic alliance. But the two countries still have much distance to travel to create one. An agenda for the Obama-Modi summit should encompass five critical areas for cooperation: defense, energy, trade and investment, the future of Afghanistan and the crisis in the Middle East,” writes Twining in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal.