This is a government with a very strong determination to protect national interest

The day after US president Donald Trump departed from New Delhi after a 36-hour state visit, external affairs minister S. JAISHANKAR sat down for an exclusive interview with Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa. In one of his most detailed interviews to date, the foreign minister put the Indo-US relationship in perspective, outlining India’s new foreign policy engagement with the world. Among other things, he expounded on the ‘Modi Doctrine’, the extraordinarily complex relationship with China, dealing with terrorism emanating from Pakistan, the abrogation of Article 370, the challenges of explaining the Citizenship (Amendment) Act to the world and the impact of the economic slowdown. Excerpts:

- Raj Chengappa

Raj Chengappa: What has been the big takeaway for India in this visit by the US president?

S. Jaishankar: This is the seventh visit by an American president, and the first time you’ve had a visit only to India, which says something. It comes in his first term; that he has taken time off from his political calendar shows the importance we both give to the relationship. What you are seeing is the India-America relationship mature, it is organically, smoothly moving forward. There are new areas of cooperation. You can see that in the politics of the relationship, in the strategic convergence, in the quality of the defence relationship—some agreements preceded the visit—in counter-terrorism, homeland security, in the entire economic family of issues—trade, technology transfers. Also in the energy relationship, which was not there [before]. For many years, nuclear was the focus with the US, but today we are importing substantial amounts of oil and gas...we could even be importing coal in the foreseeable future. One of the unique characteristics of this relationship today is the strong people to people component. It was to my mind appropriate that this visit began with an impressive P2P at the Motera stadium in Ahmedabad, because that really demonstrated that there is so much goodwill and popular support for this relationship.

RC: President Trump has placed great emphasis on trade and expressed concerns over India’s balance of trade. We were supposed to get a mini-deal on this trip, perhaps the centrepiece of the entire trip. Why did it not materialise, and what is the big deal being talked about?