HOW TO DEAL WITH THE NEW U.S. CONGRESS

Thanks to hard work by Indian diplomats, New Delhi has often manoeuvred tricky patches in Washington with help from US Congress members. That effort needs to be renewed now

- K P NAYAR

India's public obsession with Donald Trump's victorious return to the White House has largely ignored the formidable challenges that New Delhi will face on Capitol Hill from January next year. A longstanding bipartisan consensus on India is likely to fray unless South Block—the seat of the prime minister's office and the ministries of external affairs and defence—redoubles efforts to woo members of both chambers of the incoming US Congress.

Trump's instinct may be to remain friendly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Modi will want to return the 47th US president's goodwill. But any smooth passage of such intentions can only be fruitful if both South Block and the White House vigorously court senators and members of the House of Representatives. Just because the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans is the biggest country-focused caucus on Capitol Hill, it would be a fatal error to take it for granted. This also applies to the Senate India Caucus, which has the distinction of having been the first country-specific caucus in the history of the Senate.

Those who assume that merely because Trump has won the election, India's relations with the US will be better than it was with the Joe Biden administration are indulging in sheer fantasy. Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), such as its chair Pramila Jayapal and its most outspoken member Ilhan Omar, have been overwhelmingly re-elected to the House. Both these Congresswomen and many CPC members—estimated as of now to comprise about 100 legislators in the new House—feel that India has enjoyed a free pass on Capitol Hill for two decades. They are not going to change their minds.