Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

The Obama administration was “keen to see a level playing field,” regarding the civil nuclear agreement with India and there will “definitely” be an announcement on India’s role in Afghanistan and regional counter-terrorism issues, a senior State Department official said hours before the U.S. President embarked on his India visit.

Speaking to The Hindu from Washington the official said that the parties concerned had continued working on the civil nuclear agreement as a “priority” in the aftermath of the passage of the nuclear liability Bill in Parliament.

Responding to a question on whether India could expect any assurances about its future role in Afghanistan, in particular the safety of its workers there, the official said “You will definitely see things highlighted on strategic issues like Afghanistan.”

The official also rejected suggestions that the weakening of Democrats’ control over Congress might alter the course of the U.S.’ India policy, specifically the Obama administration’s anti-outsourcing stance.

Explaining that unlike the parliamentary system a loss of power in one house of the U.S. Congress did not imply a dramatic change, the official added that “there really is a bipartisan consensus on U.S.-India relations.”

When asked whether the Republicans’ willingness to permit outsourcing of jobs would clash with President Obama’s stated preference to keep jobs on U.S. soil the official said that there was “not going to be any significant change” in the official position.

The reason for this was that to create any bill the House of Representatives, the Senate and the President would have to approve and “the President still remains the President” even if he hoped to have the cooperation of Congress.

Besides these two critical issues the State Department expects that during Mr. Obama’s time in India significant announcements will be made in the areas of clean energy, science and technology cooperation, and agricultural cooperation. Education-sector partnerships also “surely will come up in the course of the trip.”

In particular the senior official said to The Hindu that initiatives on agricultural cooperation and science and technology would be taken forward, respectively by Indian-Americans Raj Shah of the USAID aid agency and Anish Chopra, Mr. Obama’s Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Chopra is in India already.

Reinforcing comments by the President this week, the official said that the State Department viewed the India leg of Mr. Obama’s trip as kicking off a four-country visit in Asia, and that was “actually quite important… because what it means is that India is the cornerstone of our approach to our engagement with Asia.”

Labels: AfPak policy, Nuclear liability law, Obama administration