Prime Minister Narendra Modi's US visit will provide a golden opportunity to both countries to repair the faltering bilateral ties though circumstances are not favourable, according to top American think-tanks.
Modi is scheduled to arrive in New York on September 26 to attend the annual session of the UN General Assembly. He will meet US President Barack Obama at the White House on September 29 and September 30.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi's forthcoming visit to Washington will provide India and the US with a golden opportunity to repair their faltering partnership. The stakes are high, even if the circumstances today are not particularly propitious," Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said yesterday in an article ahead of Modi's visit.
Tellis said if Modi's private remarks to visiting American officials recently are any indication, he seeks to end the current level of stagnation in bilateral ties.
"But his approach, which seemingly centres on soliciting huge international investments for important, high-profile projects at home, offers poor prospects for any deep US involvement that would quickly resuscitate joint cooperation between the two countries," he said.
Expectations are very high from the Modi-Obama meeting; the first between the two leaders.
"Modi has said all things are possible between India and America-even a strategic alliance. But the two countries still have much distance to travel to create one," said Daniel Twining, a senior fellow for Asia at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
"An agenda for the Obama-Modi summit should encompass five critical areas for cooperation: defence, energy, trade and investment, the future of Afghanistan and the crisis in the Middle East," he added.
Writing in an article for the Wall Street Journal, he said: "The two leaders should embrace an agenda that strengthens their role as democratic and economic counterweights to growing global disorder."
"Washington and New Delhi should develop a joint plan to expand training of Afghan security forces and enhance India's stabilising economic and diplomatic role," he added.
Twining applauded Modi for boosting India's stock market up by 30 per cent, and surging growth to nearly six per cent.
