By Simi Mehta
India certainly appears to be high on the agenda of US foreign policy. Secretary of State John Kerrys visit to India just preceded Vice President Joe Bidens by a month. Joe Biden was on his maiden trip to India in July 2013 as the Presidents deputy, making him the first Vice President to visit India in the last three decades, and the third in all (Herbert Humphrey visited India in 1966 to attend the funeral of the late Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and George Bush in the year 1984). As a Senator, Biden had played an important role in enabling the rapprochement in India- US relations, especially related to the 2008 civilian nuclear cooperation agreement. After paying homage to the man who changed the world at Raj Ghat along with his wife Jill Biden, the Vice President held a parade of meetings on Tuesday with Indias top political leaders at New Delhi and then addressed the Indian Inc. in Mumbai.
He reassured the Indian leaders that there was no contradiction between strategic autonomy and partnership between the two countries, he underlined that the key to bridging the gap was reaffirming the individual self-interests of both countries line up.
It was evident that his trip to India was to bring the Indian and the American commercial interests on the same page, when he addressed the gathering at the Bombay Stock Exchange highlighting the US interest in improving trade ties. While pointing out that Indians received more skilled-worker visas to the United States than any other country in the world, his announcement that the US government was considering increasing the number of temporary visas and availability of Green Cards to highly skilled Indians, brought cheer among the corporates and the technical aspirants in India. His candid expression that American growth story would be incomplete without the Indian human capital there was a reiteration of the need to further the trade and investments between the two greatest democracies.
He addressed the business elite on the growing concerns about the Indian economy and that it was in the interests of both nations that India should lift the trade barriers that it imposes on various sectors of its economy and exhorted it to ensure a strong, predictable and fair global
trade policy. Wide range of issues needed to be discussed between the two countries, which range from foreign direct investments, the inconsistent tax system, barriers to market access, civil nuclear cooperation, bilateral investment treaty and policies protecting innovations. Biden was quite right in sounding a caveat that India should take care of its increasingly polluted environment which might undermine the countrys growth. The importance that the US attaches to India was clear when he encouraged India to join the US in facing its myriad difficult issues, varying from intellectual property rights to inconsistent tax breaks and help the US wants to be a partner in a venture to lift the economy of the world.
Joe Biden called for a push to Indo- US defense cooperation and enhance the arms purchases from the United States. Although India has long resisted closeness to the American defense establishment, yet the recent border tensions with China and Pakistan calls for an urgent need to improve Indias defense manufacturing abilities. And as a consequence, a defence cooperation with the US could come as a rescue.
This visit has also seen the geo-political strategy of the United States in Indo- Pacific gradually unfold, where India has been referred a key player in its rebalance towards the region, which has been necessitated by changes in the global environment, both in politics and the economy. After the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the US counted on the Indian aid to ensure the common goal of a stable and prosperous future for the Afghan people. He remarked that the significant commonality of interests of India, China and the US would benefit not only the respective countries, but the whole of the Indo-Pacific region, if coordinated more closely with each other. This visit clearly points out to the continuity in the strengthening of the economic and defense ties between the two countries, not only for one another but for the economic and political stability of the region. While assuring US support for India’s candidacy for a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council, Biden’s visit will also laid the ground for the visit of Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singhs crucial visit to the US in September-October this year. Thus although the visit of the US Vice President Joseph Biden to India (July 22-25, 2013) may not have led to any major breakthrough, but undoubtedly provided a scenic understanding of the
consistency of Indias valuable support that is required to attain the objectives of free market liberal order, grounded on the principles of democracy and peace.
(The author is a Ph.D scholar in the American Studies Program at the Centre for Canadian, United States and Latin American Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and can be reached at simimehta.08@gmail.com).