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In a development of immense geo-strategic significance, US President Barack Obama will be the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations on January 26 next year. Not only will he be the first US President to be accorded the honour, he will also be the first to visit India twice during his presidential tenure.
The Indian foreign policy establishment stressed the invite to Obama and its acceptance was primarily at an initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Fittingly, Modi was the one who announced the development. “This Republic Day, we hope to have a friend over…invited President Obama to be the 1st US President to grace the occasion as chief guest,” he tweeted Friday evening, catching most of his Cabinet colleagues by surprise. A little later, the Obama administration in Washington DC and India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) confirmed the US president had accepted Modi’s invite.
MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said Modi, on his return from the US in September, had taken a “personal initiative” to invite the US president to the Republic Day parade during one of their conversations. This was followed by a formal letter, and a confirmation was received on Friday. “We will now look forward to this development, which stems from the initiative of our PM, which followed their (Obama and Modi’s) bilateral meeting in Washington.”
On condition of anonymity, a former diplomat who had played an important role in India-US bilateral ties said though Obama’s visit would come towards the end of his term, it would be unfair to criticise it as a visit by a “lame duck” president.
This, the diplomat added, was because past presidents such as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W Bush had strengthened bilateral relations, either through a visit or through pushing key agreements such as the nuclear deal in 2008, during the last years of their tenures.
In 2005, the US had denied Modi a visa because of his perceived failure to control anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002. Many had anticipated strained India-US relations during Modi’s tenure, a conjecture that seemed to gather grist when Modi focused on improving relations with China, Japan and India’s neighbouring countries in the first six months of his tenure.
However, Friday’s development is likely to overcome the recent rough patch in the India-US bilateral relations.
Prime Minister Modi had met Obama in Washington DC over two days in September-end. He had also met the US President on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Myanmar and during the G20 meeting in Australia, where the two struck a deal related to the World Trade Organization (WTO); Obama had called Modi “a man of action”. The US President had spoken of a new foreign policy for Asia, in which India was expected to be a key partner.
The two leaders have together even penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post titled ‘A Renewed US-India Partnership for the 21st Century’.
Obama had last visited India in November 2010, and was accorded the honour of addressing a joint session of Parliament.
India-US relations, however, hit turbulence in the succeeding months and years.
The two countries have about three dozen dialogue mechanisms to strengthen bilateral engagement on economic and trade issues, including a ministerial trade policy forum and a ministerial-level economic and financial partnership to iron out differences on trade and investment.
But all machinery seemed to have stopped working, with increasing criticism from the US, especially American firms, related to India’s trade and industrial policies.
American companies have been particularly miffed since India decided to grant a compulsory license to Natco Pharma to produce and sell generic versions of Bayer-Onyx’s cancer drug, Nexavar. The matter worsened in April last year when the Supreme Court rejected a patent application by Swiss company Novartis for its cancer drug, Glivec.
Since then, the US had been extremely critical of India’s patent and intellectual property regime.
Matters hit a nadir when Devyani Khobragade, an Indian deputy consul general in New York, was arrested and strip-searched over visa fraud charges, triggering a massive diplomatic row that saw India taking some tough action against Americans.
“Well, past incidents tell us just because you make a certain head of state your Republic Day chief guest, bilateral relations start to soar. More, let us not forget, Obama’s days as US president are counted. Nevertheless, it is a big healing step and will contribute towards boosting investor confidence,” said a leading industrialist on condition of anonymity.
Recently, India and the US were also seen sparring over the WTO’s trade facilitation agreement, aimed at easing global customs rules. However, the issue seems to have been resolved, with the US promising to support India’s demand for food security at the multilateral platform.
Next week, the two countries will hold the trade policy forum after a long hiatus. The meeting will seek to discuss all pending issues relating to trade and investment.
