Ending a nine-year chill with the man who is set to be the leader of the world’s largest democracy, US President Barack Obama has congratulated the prime minister-elect Narendra Modi on his party’s “historic victory” in India’s parliamentary elections and invited him to visit Washington.
In a congratulatory call to Modi, who is set to be sworn in as the prime minister of India next week, Obama also expressed hope that he looked forward to expanding partnership between India and the US in days to come.
“The president noted he looks forward to working closely with Mr. Modi to fulfill the extraordinary promise of the U.S.-India strategic partnership, and they agreed to continue expanding and deepening the wide-ranging cooperation between our two democracies,” the White House said in a statement.
The president invited Narendra Modi to visit Washington at a mutually agreeable time to further strengthen our bilateral relationship. The earliest opportunity for Modi to visit the US will be to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September this year. It’s not clear whether he will go to the White House for bilateral talks if he chooses to represent India at the UNGA.
The US had imposed a visa ban on Modi for his alleged role in the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002 that happened under his watch as the chief minister of the state. But in the last few weeks, the US signalled a thaw with Modi after a string of surveys showed the BJP and Modi to be the frontrunner in forming the next government in India. This was reflected in the visit of US’ outgoing ambassador Nacncy Powell to Ahamedabad to meet Modi in February this year and convey the message from the White House that Washington looked forward to strengthening the India-US partnership under his watch if he was chosen as the leader of India.
Obama’s message indicated that the US was looking forward to engaging Modi, widely seen as pro-business and pro-reforms. The business lobbies in the US had voiced mounting exasperation with the slow pace of economic reforms under the Manmohan Singh government and the policy paralysis was seen as a key factor for cooling off of the India-US relations in the last couple of years.
Now, with Modi at the helm in Asia’s second largest economy, global investors, including US business lobbies, are ready to bet again on the India story and are hoping that he will finally deliver on the much-delayed second generation economic reforms and pave the way for an upswing in economic ties between the world’s two largest democracies.
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