When he addressed the joint session of the US Congress seven years ago this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared that India had ended its “historic hesitations” in dealing with the United States. Modi’s claim had credibility, given his record on improving relations with the US during the first two years as prime minister. In the years that followed, PM Modi took consistent steps to expand the engagement with the US. The last few years have seen rapid expansion of trade to US$191 billion, making Washington the most important commercial partner for India.
The US prevented Pakistan and China from taking up the Kashmir question in the United Nations Security Council after the NDA government changed its constitutional status in August 2019. When China surprised India with its military ingress in eastern Ladakh amidst a raging Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the US stepped in to assist India in coping with the challenge by providing equipment and intelligence.
Despite these welcome steps, the Indian security establishment remained hesitant in opening the doors for wider defence cooperation with the US. Although successive presidents from George W Bush onwards were enthusiastic about a new partnership with India, bureaucratic obstacles persisted. The story of Modi’s visit to Washington this week was about overcoming these hurdles.
The two governments announced a range of ambitious new agreements, including on the transfer of advanced technologies and defence cooperation, on clean energy and climate change, and on promoting a new rules-based order.
As the PM put it in his address to the US Congress, India and the US “stand at a new dawn in our relationship that will not only shape the destiny of our two nations, but also that of the world.” It is tempting to conclude that the shared challenge from China drove India and the US to a new juncture. That is certainly true of the plans to build deeper defence cooperation that will see US support for the modernisation of India’s defence industry, and India’s facilitation of greater operational coordination between the two armed forces.
But there is a larger imperative that binds the two nations — the need to reboot their national economies amidst disruptions unleashed by new technologies, the recognition that the framework of economic globalisation must be reworked, and the need to restructure the traditional relationship between energy and economy to ensure sustainable growth. Fulfilling this ambitious bilateral agenda with regional and global consequences demands suppleness and creativity in the Indian policy and administrative establishment.
Even as he leverages the US relationship to transform the Indian economy and elevate Delhi’s global standing, the PM’s visit has brought the two nations to an interesting paradox. Through the Cold War, Delhi and Washington celebrated their shared democratic values, but found it hard to cooperate on any major issue. Now Modi, who has created the basis for unprecedented cooperation with America over the last decade, finds himself a target of intense US liberal criticism on India’s “democratic backsliding”. While Modi underlined India’s deep-rooted democratic credentials, Biden was careful not to be seen hectoring the Indian PM. Both India and the US have a major task of democratic renewal ahead. That, however, is a domestic political task and not something to be imposed from outside.
