Foreign Secretary sets the tone for warm atmospherics, for discussions as ‘friends and partners’
India is pulling out all stops to welcome US President Barack Obama and hopes the personalised attention will translate into a better understanding of its concerns, both in terms of reassuring the US that an open economy will help India create even more jobs back in the US, as well as an enhanced strategic partnership that will add flexibility and muscle to Delhi's engagement with Pakistan, Afghanistan and China.
Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, briefing reporters today on the eve of the Obama visit, which begins in Mumbai on Saturday and moves to Delhi for the next three days, was warm and fulsome in her welcome, iterating again and again that the “unprecedented dialogue” between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the US President would expand a relationship dominated by “shared values and increasingly converging interests”, where India had become the fastest growing source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the US — that supported nearly 57,000 jobs — while the US had become, with $8.8 billion (Rs 39,000 crore), the third largest source of FDI in India.
But in a week in which Obama is severely hurting after losing the US House of Representatives at home and the sliding economy obsessing his attention, India clearly looks like it has toned down its expectations from the visit -- whether on the ending of outsourcing curbs into information technology companies, lifting export controls on dual-use technologies and removing Indian entities from its Entities List, support for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council or even a passing comment on the extradition of ex-Carbide chief, Warren Anderson, to India.
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Significantly, with the US economy in such poor shape and the Indian market looking embarrassingly rosy in comparison, the US President will meet the participants of the India-US CEO’s Forum led by Ratan Tata and David M Cote of Honeywell Inc, in Hyderabad House, a venue usually reserved for stratospheric conversations on strategy and high politics with visiting foreign delegations.
Significantly, Honeywell, which employs 11,000 people in India, recently won a $670 million contract to re-engine India’s Jaguar air fighter fleet, requiring Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd to source 600 aircraft engines from them over the next 10-15 years.
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The Obama address to the CEOs Forum takes place soon after delegation-level talks are concluded on Monday (after the ceremonial welcome in Rashtrapati Bhawan and the laying of the wreath at Gandhi’s Samadhi in Rajghat) and before the joint press conference. Later that afternoon, both Sonia Gandhi and the leader of the opposition, BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, will call on Obama before Parliament assembles to hear his joint address that would also inaugurate its winter session.
Seen in conjunction with the enormous attention being given to the Indian business community in Mumbai on Saturday – when the US-India Business Council, supported by Ficci and CII will host 400 Indian and American businessmen at the Trident hotel on the day he lands in India, soon after he has made his speech on anti-terrorism cooperation in the backdrop of the Taj hotel — the Delhi event at Hyderabad House demonstrates the integration between the economy and politics like it has never been before.
It is unusual for foreign leaders to hold court with Indian business leaders in this sanctum sanctorum. In fact, Delhi’s willingness to collapse the barriers also points to the assertion of the economist-PM’s keenness to portray India as a rising economic power, willing to play a responsible role in this part of the world, officials said on condition of anonymity.
Clearly, the Obama visit will not be dominated by any one big issue, like the nuclear deal was the centre-piece of the Bush visit in 2006. But it could become the sum of many parts, of which an economic and strategic partnership will form the core.
As for US nuclear companies investing in India, the Foreign Secretary said the Department of Atomic Energy had opened talks with Westinghouse and General Electric and invited them to articulate their concerns with India’s nuclear liability law.
“We welcome the commencement of the negotiations and look forward to their early conclusion,” Rao said, announcing that a commercial delegation of US companies would be visiting soon and India wanted a level playing field for all foreign nuclear companies investing in India.
Officials pointed out that US investment, especially in the civil nuclear field, would not only increase US economic stakes in India: it would also discourage protectionist tendencies back home. Meanwhile, Washington would be encouraged to emphasise the strategic and political contours of the relationship, including greater attention to India’s concerns on the Pakistan-China nexus, including in Afghanistan, as well as acknowledge India’s role in the Indian Ocean region, extending from the Straits of Hormuz right up to the East China sea.
“India’s interests in the region go beyond South Asia…So, when we meet as friends and partners, we discuss all issues. So, yes, we will talk about China…but it will be an open and transparent dialogue to engage China,” Nirupama Rao said.
Rao, who travels to China within the week of the conclusion of the Obama visit, was careful to explain that neither India nor the US were seeking to separately or jointly contain China, but in fact Delhi was seeking to expand and understand the security and investment dimensions in the relationship.