GOING BEYOND TRADE TIES

Cynics could say the surround sound wasn't too auspicious. Within a day of his touchdown, US Vice President J.D. Vance had the mortification of seeing his India visit being cited in the same breath as a tragedy in Kashmir.

- Pradip R. Sagar

Correlation, not causation, was a maxim already in play—sorrow had enveloped the Vatican soon after a pit-stop by the veep en route to India. Not to speak of the grief his boss had given to the world economy, the only one that could be directly addressed to Vance, and which he was prepared to answer for. “We're not here to preach that you do things a certain way,” he said in the only public engagement of his four-day visit, at the Rajasthan International Centre in Jaipur, on April 22. “We come to you as partners, looking to strengthen our relationship.”

Those words may have been reassuring for Indian audiences. Most would have watched his live TV joust with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, some may have harkened to the take-no-prisoners approach in his February speech to European leaders. But equations with India are different, and New Delhi’s tactical nous, too, is considerable. By all parameters, Vance’s India sojourn was deemed a successful one for both sides, with all the optics and signalling on relevant issues entirely in place. The primary moodlifter was Vance’s assurance that his government is committed to buttressing trade relations with India through the proposed bilateral trade agreement (BTA) that both sides agreed to work on during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s US visit in February.

TAKEAWAYS FROM THE VEEP'S VISIT

• Vance's visit gets the optics right, assures Delhi that the Bilateral Trade Agreement is on course

• PMO, White House say a roadmap is set for BTA; talks start in US
  It will help achieve bilateral goal of reaching $500 million trade, lower tariffs on US goods, help India protect its farm sector

• Vance urges India to buy more defence and energy products; offers F-35 jets, Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stryker armoured vehicles