Deep trust, long-term goals: Key visit takeaways for India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US has been an “exceptional, landmark, path-breaking visit”; the decisions are “truly transformative” across areas; and this level of collaboration reflects both “deep trust” between the two sides and the fact that India and the US are in it for the “long-term”, foreign secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra said.

- Prashant Jha

Kwatra also said that the area of technology cooperation across the entire ecosystem — tech transfer, tech trade in products and services, tech capacity building, tech co-production and research — constituted a major takeaway from the visit, alluding to the cooperation within the framework of the initiative on critical and emerging technologies (iCET) and beyond.

Speaking to reporters after the state dinner hosted by President Joe Biden for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, around midnight on Thursday, Kwatra laid out the Indian perspective on the visit. While there has been robust public messaging and background briefings from the American side, including in the run-up to the visit, the Indian side was cautious about speaking of outcomes till the final joint statement was released.

Besides highlighting the symbolism associated with the state welcome, the personal connection between Biden and Modi, Kwatra focused on the substantive outcomes the visit has been able to deliver. He also said that the two leaders discussed the nature of challenges in the Indo-Pacific and what they could to together to meet, in response to a question on whether and how China figured in the discussion.

The tech and defence takeaway

Technology, Kwatra said, constituted a key theme of the discussions, with “roughly 20 to 25” areas of tech cooperation identified in the statement.