NEW DELHI: New Delhi: US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to India was a carefully planned affair, orchestrated to derive maximum benefit for the visitors in a booming market. Each member of the team reflected the strategic role they would play in the overall dialogue. Deputy Secretary, Department of Energy Daniel Poneman, Under Secretary Dept of Homeland Security Francis X Tayor and the US Special Envoy for Climate Change, Todd Stern. Poneman, the second ranking officer in the Department of Energy, is known as a specialist in nuclear safety and proliferation. He naturally has to find ways to smoothen the wrinkles in the India-US civil nuclear cooperation, which is stuck over domestic Indian legislation on liability for suppliers. Hydrocarbons are an increasing area for cooperation, with Poneman meeting with Dharmendra Pradhan, the Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas on the sidelines. He specifically highlighted that Indian companies should consider investing in US’s “vibrant” upstream hydrocarbon sector. Meanwhile, US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern called upon environment minister Prakash Javedkar for the first meeting of the India US Joint Working Group on combating Climate Change. Meanwhile, in another part of Delhi, Kaidanow and Taylor were holding talks with their counterparts in the security agencies and Ministry of Home Affairs as part of the Counter-terrorism working group.
Hagel came to India carrying a heavy burden. His famous faux pas in 2011 about India being a mischief maker in Afghanistan may have passed uncommented upon, but his mission seeking traction on the pending defence deals to the tune of `20,000 crore wasn’t a comprehensive success. He met with four crucial members of India’s political and security edifice—Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval—all in a day’s work. Sources had indicated that Defence is one of the “transformative” initiatives planned by the US around Modi’s White House meeting with Obama, certainly joint co-production, a la Brahmos between Russia and India. Among the top Indo-US deals include the 10 C-17 strategic lift aircraft for the Air Force worth `20,000 crore, 12 C-130J special operations planes worth `10,000 crore, another eight P-8I maritime spy planes worth `20,000 crore, apart from the Harpoon anti-submarine missile and weapon locating radars. Deals worth `20,000 crore are pending for signature, which is on top of Hagel’s mind. Also on his agenda was the 10-year Framework for Defence Cooperation that expires in July 2015. Incidentally, neither Kerry nor Hagel even thought about missing their India trip, though both were fire-fighting international crises like the Gaza problem and ISIS.
Hagel’s India visit cannot be termed as an unqualified success because New Delhi insisted that the US should provide the same groundbreaking technology it gave its allies. Prominent member of Team Hagel, Frank Kendall is the lead for the US-India Defence Trade and Technology Initiative (DTII), which is described as one of the pillars to build a strategic defence partnership. Puneet Talwar is a supporting member of the DTII, with the additional mandate to seek opportunities in security cooperation, counter-piracy and peacekeeping. Hagel’s former deputy Ashton B Carter was the force behind the DTTI effort, which was signed in September 2012 when Hagel’s predecessor Leon Panetta was heading the Pentagon. Then, both India and US had agreed to take about a year to identify defence products to jointly develop and co-produce. Regarding the non starter, the two nations took a step forward by appointing their respective contact persons. In 2013, Carter had offered including the Javelin anti-tank guided missile for the Indian Army, Sikorsky-Lockheed Martin MH-60 Romeo helicopter for its Navy and BAE Systems Mk45 127mm naval gun for the Indian Navy as some of the products that could be co-produced through full technology transfer. But India hasn’t shown interest.
Talwar would be the third Indian-origin senior official making a round of New Delhi in this very busy year, along with Biswal and Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Global Markets Arun Kumar. In fact, Kumar has earned a distinction of twice visiting India within a month. He first led a trade delegation in mid-July and then participated in the Strategic Dialogue on July 31. It will be up to Arun Kumar and his colleagues to pry open the Indian market. Currently, India’s share of total global US good exports is just 1.4 per cent and slightly higher for services at 2 per cent. But their current numbers are not the real story; their growth potential is. Kumar said at a recent US house sub-committee hearing that two priorities for the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration (ITA) is to expand commercial opportunities for US exporters to India and to increase Indian investment into US. He pointed out that on the investment front, India is the 8th fastest growing source of FDI in US. Incidentally, ITA’s Indian footprint is its largest outside US, with seven outposts in New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai. ITA also runs an advocacy centre, which helps American SMEs to bid for government contracts. Kumar told the House panel that in 2014, ITA has already helped US companies win $4.2 billion in contracts in India. John Kerr’s speech called for an annual $500 billion trade growth between US and India.
With European markets shrinking, corporate America is wooing expanding markets like India and China. India is currently US’s 11th largest goods trading partner with $63.7 billion in total goods trade during 2013. India was US’s 18th largest goods export market in 2013, accounting for 1.4 per cent of overall US exports in 2013, which it hopes to increase. US wants greater access to Indian markets, simpler rules of engagement and a stronger intellectual protection regime—meaning US opposition to Indian pharmaceutical industry producing cheap versions of costly life-saving drugs. A recent study of 68 Indian companies which have invested, conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industry, has found they piped in nearly US $17 billion in the US. About one-third of the companies actively engage in Research and Development (R&D), having spent over US $340 million in R&D, thus contributing to more innovation.
So far, Hagel’s is the last scheduled incoming visit by a US official in the six weeks till Modi leaves for the US on September 25. “But, that doesn’t mean there would be no more of them dropping in. To prepare a prime ministerial visit, short notice trips could happen,” said an official. While their dates are not yet fixed, important meetings of the defence policy group and the Trade Policy group have been planned before the end of the year. These two are the main premier bilateral interactions and their revival is one of the key points on the joint agenda. In the past one year, there have been over 70 senior-level visits from both sides.