To doomsayers predicting the worst after Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Russia and then Ukraine, note these words in the statement issued at the end of his bilateral with the US President in Wilmington, Delaware early on Sunday morning:
“Biden commended PM Modi for his historic visits to Poland and Ukraine, the first by an Indian prime minister in decades, and for his message of peace and ongoing humanitarian support for Ukraine.”
The statement does not go into the details of what Modi told Biden about his interactions in Kyiv or Moscow, nor the roadmap going forward given that the US is in election mode. Anything that follows will be at the initiative of the new president.
Nor was it clear if Khalistan came up in the discussions with Biden, but NSA Ajit Doval did not travel to the US, apparently given his preoccupation with the Kashmir elections. Other reports hinted at concern in Delhi given the recent notice by a US court summoning Doval and former RAW chief Samant Goel.
On defence, the joint statement said an Indian naval officer will co-lead the Combined Task Force 150 “to secure sea lanes in the Arabian Sea.” An Indian officer will also be posted in the US Special Operations Command.
More on defence with Boeing subsidiary Liquid Robotics teaming up with India’s Sagar Defence to develop and produce unmanned surface vehicles; the US has welcomed India’s 5% GST on MRO in aviation, which is expected to speed up Lockheed’s venture with Tata’s directed at supporting the C-130J fleet of Hercules transport aircraft in India and overseas.
A three-way collaboration between Bharat Semi, 3rdiTech and the US Space Force will see a fab being set up to make infrared gallium nitride and silicon carbide semiconductors crucial for national security, next gen telecom and green energy applications.
The two countries plan to mobilise up to $90 million in Indian and US funding to back “high impact R&D partnerships involving research institutions”.
Incidentally, India’s IT Ministry and the National Semiconductor Mission are teaming up with the US State Department for the International Technology Security & Innovation Fund.
Biden and Modi also welcomed the launch of the US-India Advanced Materials R&D Forum; $10 million will fund 12 projects in areas of semiconductors, intelligent transportation systems, sustainability and green technologies; also “11 funding awards” covering machine learning, connected vehicles backed by $5 million corpus.
Across the clean energy value chain, the two countries will work “to unlock $1 billion of multilateral financing to support projects … in renewable energy, energy storage, power grid and transmission technologies, high efficiency cooling systems and zero emission vehicles.”
Both countries are forking out $500 million each to anchor the Green Transition Fund. Other areas the two sides are working on include space with the meeting next year of the Civil Space Joint Working Group; Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence will see major focus, also R&D in chip manufacturing, Internet of Things devices and data centres.
