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Addressing students at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT Madras), he added that US welcomes the new normal of India as the global strategic, political and economic player. He said Washington will continue to support India's bid for UNSC membership in a reformed security council and phased membership in the four export control regimes, and wants India to play a key role at the Paris climate talks.
Commenting on economic relations, he said that the two-way trade numbers are up and have surpassed $103 billion, and increasingly Indian companies are opening and investing in the US. Foreign direct investment in India from American investors is on the rebound, and US has seen a positive "race to the top" in Indian states trying to compete for American investment, as they tout new regulatory reforms and improvements in ease of doing business. Some critical sectors like insurance and mining have opened up further to outside ownership and investment in recent months, he added.
"We are in intensive consultations over a bilateral investment treaty; we have similarly intense discussions on food security at the WTO; and have established robust dialogues and information sharing mechanisms on finance and tax," he said. Last week, India signed a bilateral agreement with US to share information to deter and detect tax evasion and money laundering.
"We are also lining up to support India's priorities in developing its infrastructure for the 21st Century and helping it deal with the massive urbanisation challenges confronting the country in the years ahead. We are a close partner in the Smart Cities campaign and in three cities in particular we are bringing our financing, technology and expertise to bear to help plan and design more modern, safe and sustainable living spaces," said Verma.
The two countries have established mechanisms to discuss disagreements and in the past nine months, have solved longstanding disputes on liability in the civil nuclear deal through the US-India contact group, negotiated a way forward to India's food security concerns at the WTO and averted a stalement at the Montreal Protocol discussions on HFCs.
"We are no working constructively with India on its proposal to reduce HFCs; on intellectual property, we have been able to voice our concerns through the trade policy forum and even weigh in and provide feedback on India's overhaul of its IP policy," he said. He said that US will continue to work with Indian counterparts on improving the ease of doing business, protecting intellectual property, and seeing that more sectors of the economy are open for investments.
Mentioning that the co-operation is no longer limited to South Asia and both the countries are working in more areas than ever before, he referred the partnership as a "Strategic Plus", with the "plus" indicating a broader geographic zone of cooperation and engagement in more areas than ever before. There were over 80 initiatives coming out of the January visit of US President Obama and around 30 dialogues/working groups have been re-launched since the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington DC last September.
Elaborating on the collaboration between the two countries in the defense sector, he said that both countries are looking forward to a day very soon when, for the first time, secure phone lines between the respective National Security Advisors and between between US President and Indian Prime Minister will become operational, further opening key channels of communication on sensitive issues.
He added that there around 1,00,000 Indian students studying in US and there are two IIT-Madras scholars headed to US this year under the Fulbright-Nehru programme and two Americans are headed to IIT-Madras.
"Our university and community college presidents are talking to their counterparts in India about expanding the reach of our higher education and skills training efforts to future generations," he added.
Verma today visited IIT-M's Centre For Innovation to witness the demonstration of innovative projects by the students from various departments.
