Tag: Modi-Obama

Trump-Modi dinner: What’s cooking, what’s on menu?

- by Manish Chand

It promises to be a gourmet meal as the leaders of the world’s oldest and largest democracies have their first full-spectrum meeting and dinner in Washington DC on June 26. The buzz and hype surrounding India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fifth visit to the US is relatively subdued – the carnival-like festive atmosphere and feverish energy that marked his first visit to the US, with his rock-star like show at Madison Square Garden, in September 2014 seems a distant echo, but even though the horizon of expectations has shrunk there are still some appetising dishes on the table which both sides can pick and choose to suit their taste and some serious business to transact.
Looking ahead, cutting through minutiae and complexity of issues, the really important question for India is whether the new US president believes in a “New India” which PM Modi is trying to create and whether this new India synthesises with Trump’s promise of Making America Great Again. If there is win-win fit, then indeed the chronic “hesitations of history” will be passe, and a new symphony can steer India-US relations onto a higher trajectory. Read more…

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Act East in Laos: Focus on Modi’s meetings with Abe, Obama

- by Manish Chand

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe were staying in the same hotel in Hangzhou for the G20 summit, and may have engaged in ritualistic pleasantries, but with China looking on, they will meet in Vientiane for a substantive bilateral meeting.
In a delicate geopolitical game, after engaging China’s President Xi Jinping in Hangzhou, PM Modi will now turn to India’s trusted strategic partner for support on the country’s crucial development agenda in which Tokyo has emerged as New Delhi’s prime partner. Significantly, Mr Xi and Mr Abe also met briefly on the sidelines of the G20 summit, signalling prospects of a thaw in strained bilateral relations between the two estranged rivals.
The meeting between Mr Modi and Mr Abe, who have forged a personal chemistry and special relationship, will be watched closely in Beijing for obvious reasons. China suspects India to be locked into a containment game with Japan and the US, a perception that has been repeatedly countered by New Delhi.
In Vientiane, Mr Modi will also hold a bilateral meeting with US President Barack Obama. Mr Modi met Mr Obama for a brief pull aside talk in Hanzhou, with Mr Obama lauding the Indian leader for the passage of the path-breaking Goods and Sales Tax. The two leaders will have substantive discussions in Laos, with India’s membership of the NSG topping the agenda.

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A new symphony: NSG tops agenda at India-US dialogue

- by Manish Chand

Ahead of the last meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama in China, India and the US will hold their second strategic and commercial dialogue in New Delhi, which will hopefully bring to closure some key issues on the bilateral agenda and map the way ahead.
The Strategic Dialogue will be co-chaired by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Commercial Dialogue will be co-chaired by India’s Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. The August 30 talks, which will be followed by the Modi-Obama meeting in on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hangzhou, will cap more than a decade of blossoming of the India-US relations, which were transformed by the pathbreaking India-US nuclear deal in the summer of 2005.
With the bilateral relationship on a firm footing, the focus will be logically on the unfinished agenda during the last few months of the Obama presidency. For India, getting full membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group tops the agenda as only a strong push from the US can swing around fence-sitters and sceptics.
In the end, with so much going on between the world’s largest democracies, PM Modi and President Obama will surely have a lot to commend each other for bringing the India-US relationship this far. Hesitations of history are passe, and “a new symphony is in place” as PM Modi said memorably in his speech to the US Congress. It’s time to play on, raise the bar and aim big…

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10 years after nuclear deal: How estranged democracies became ‘natural & best partners’

- by Manish Chand

t’s been a transformative decade in the India-US relations, birthed and nurtured by the path-breaking nuclear deal that morphed the once estranged democracies into engaged democracies. The 10th anniversary of the transformational India-US nuclear deal, conceived on a warm summer day in July 2005, deserved a joint op-ed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama, with a soaring vision statement of the brave new future of this crucial relationship. Or better still, the two principal protagonists in catalyzing the deal – then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and then US President George Bush – would have found time to pen their reflections, and a thousand visions and revisions that framed the grand bargain. They may still do that, but for now we may have to do with the joint op-ed by the ambassadors of India and the US, published in the Huffington Post.

The two grown-up democracies can’t be expected to agree on every issue, and there are still many imponderables that can challenge this defining partnership, but the horizons for the multi-hued India-US relations remain relatively unclouded. The establishments in New Delhi and beltway Washington may cavil, but the sheer strength of people-to-people relations will ensure that the intricate machinery of India-US partnership will keep humming with new ideas, energy and drive to transform the lives of people not just in the two countries, but around the world. This is the true legacy of the India-US nuclear deal, provided this transformative impulse will endure in the decades ahead.

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