Technology spurring growth in India-US ties
THE entries in the guest book at India House, the residence of the Indian Ambassador in Washington, in the last one month offer insights like none other into what is on the table this week during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first state visit to the US. Based on entries in the guest books at the residence and the chancery in the first 10 days of June, it can be safely predicted that Modi’s ‘Deng Xiaoping juncture’ in dealing with the US has arrived. The big question is: will India’s inert bureaucracy, sceptical strategic community and cautious corporate leaders seize this moment?
Take a random date this month, say June 9, and follow the daybook at the embassy and the residence. On that day, Vimal Kapur, CEO of Honeywell, a multinational corporation which leads in aerospace, building technologies, life sciences, logistics and productivity solutions, called on Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu. Leave aside the inspiring story of Kapur’s journey from Patiala to Charlotte, North Carolina, from a beginner’s job at a Honeywell joint venture in India in 1989 to the conglomerate’s CEO 19 days ago, Honeywell has a presence in India going back eight decades it employs 13,000 Indians in 20 domestic locations and operates four global centres of excellence for technology development and innovation. Under Kapur’s stewardship, Honeywell is prepared to explore ‘new opportunities in India in aerospace and defence, clean energy and tech sectors’ this came out after he met the Ambassador.
On the same day, Sandhu met Vinod Khosla, one of America’s most successful venture capitalists, who ranked 92 on the Forbes list of the richest people in the US in 2021. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982, but is now investing in experimental new technologies through his company, Khosla Ventures. Khosla’s discussions with Sandhu focused on ‘possibilities that artificial intelligence offers for meeting development priorities and convergences among strategic, scientific and commercial domains.’ Among Sandhu’s crowded itinerary that week were meetings with Ravi Kumar, CEO of Cognizant, to discuss skilling and capacity-building in India, and discussions with a team from back home, led by the Secretary of the Department of Biotechnology, for high-performance bio-manufacturing in India. He also had exchanges with leaders of the US Senate and House of Representatives Committees dealing with energy, banking and finance at one session, and another on healthcare, digital, information technology and renewables.
How the agenda for India-US engagement has changed! When Sandhu was first posted to Washington in 1997 as First Secretary, his job was to battle Khalistani lobbyists on Capitol Hill campaigning to cut US aid to India and secessionist elements funded by Pakistan to prod American politicians to hold Congressional hearings on Kashmir. By the time he returned to Washington in 2013 as Deputy Chief of Mission, the bilateral ties with India had taken off with the nuclear deal and a strategic partnership, but with Lok Sabha elections only a year away, the relationship hit a plateau. Sandhu’s entire career has been closely tied to growth in India-US relations. There are only three other diplomats in India’s history whose career had a similar trajectory in other bilateral engagements: two with the Soviet Union and one in multilateral processes.
And how much has the US changed! Reflecting such change were the CEOs of Indian origin trooping into India House ahead of Modi’s arrival at the White House. The Ambassador was not deliberately courting CEOs of Indian origin or singling them out for his attention. Trust in highly-placed Indian professionals has grown to such an extent in the US that if an Indian of good reputation and financial integrity is on a company’s board, its share value climbs up. They are Americans first, but it is hard to take the Indian out of them altogether. During the nuclear deal negotiations, it was proved that key persons of Indian origin in many walks of American life could influence the US policy. Modi will be reassured of that once again during his visit.
Scanning the recent guest list at India House, it is clear that ahead of the Prime Minister’s Washington trip, the Modi government has been diligently addressing an issue which received only halting attention in the past sharing technology. A High Technology Cooperation Group in 2002 or a ‘Statement of Principles for US-India High Technology Commerce’ a year later only scratched the surface of the problem. Deng made it a priority when he started modernising China that access to western technology was critical to his country’s rise. In addition to signing deals with governments and the private sector, China sent thousands of their brightest students to US universities especially institutions of scientific and technical learning. At one point, the largest group of foreign students in the US were from China. Unlike Indian students who stayed on in America after graduation and made careers for themselves in the US, Chinese students mostly went back to contribute to their country’s growth.
India has now realised that technology must be the driver of modernisation in the next stage of relations with the US. Hence, the initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) was announced in May 2022 and its inaugural meeting was convened this January. Excessive focus on the small fish, like a fighter jet engine production in India smartly abetted by corporate media publicists for the companies involved means the big fish will escape the bait. One-on-one, in-depth meetings like the ones with Kapur, Kumar and Khosla are to attract the big fish. The last state visit to the White House by an Indian Prime Minister was by Manmohan Singh in November 2009. Only one other Indian leader, the then President S Radhakrishnan, was accorded a state visit in June 1963. Manmohan Singh’s state visit coincided with a high-level economic and political dialogue between China and the US in Washington.
China got many concessions from the US during that dialogue. As Manmohan Singh was emplaning at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at the end of his visit, a perceptive Indian diplomat told this writer that ‘China got substantive gains from engaging with the US. All we got was a state dinner at the White House.’ Looking at the lay of the land now, this will not be the case during and after Modi’s state visit to Washington.
