#129: PM Modi in USA

The deals, the details and all you need to know for UPSC

PM Modi landed in the USA on his first ever state visit from June 20-24 2023. He participated in the International Yoga Day at New York making a world record representing highest number of nationalities presented in a single yoga session. But the real glamour joins the party at the city of Washington DC where PM Modi became only third world leader after Churchill and Mandela to address the US Congress twice.

In this blog post, I am documenting all the important information from the POTUS-PM meetings and other relevant information that you need to know for the UPSC Civil Services Exam.

Keywords for Mains Answers

• Most consequential partnership in the world

  • President Biden’s description of India-US relationship

• Mutual trust and shared strategic priorities

  • PM Modi’s description of defense partnership

  • Transition to transfer of tech, co-development and co-production from old buyer-seller setup

• Even sky is not the limit for India-US friendship

• Overcoming hesitations of the history wrt trade and ties

• Emerging cooperation in AI

  • AI: Artificial Intelligence

  • AI: America and India

• Keywords: Mnemonic to Remember HES FAT

  • 2H: Healthcare and Humanitarian efforts

  • 2E: Energy and Education

  • 3S: Startups, Semiconductors and Sustainability

  • 2F: Finance and Farming

  • 2A: Art and AI

  • 2T: Trade and Tech

Diplomacy under different leaders

Under different PMs and POTUS

• Clinton Vajpayee era: Summit level diplomacy

• Manmohan-Bush and Manmohan-Obama era: Nuclear diplomacy

• Modi-Obama and Modi-Trump: Trade and Military diplomacy

• Modi-Biden: Technology diplomacy

Soft Power Elements

• “Be it creative reels on Insta or real time payments, coding or quantum computing...the youth of India are a great example of how a society can embrace latest technology”

• Mushroom to millets, srikhand to sandesh, dosa to aloo paratha; we celebrate all our diversity

• Niagara falls, Indian consulate and Empire State building colored in tricolor on eve of PM Modi in US

• Samosa Caucus: Informal grouping of Indian-origin Americans in Congress

Some stats

• Indian Americans are 1% of US population but pays 6% of total income taxes

• 40 Indian origin Americans made it to various high offices across US

• 35 Indian origin judges in the US as per a US report

• 46/100 total digital payments happened in India

Discussions and Business focus areas

Collaboration on ‘nearly every human endeavor’ [POTUS said]

• Indo-Pacific, a common priority

• Semiconductors supply, RAN telecom networks

• Major defense partnership w/ more joint exercises

• Shared expertise on critical and emerging technologies

• Deals on procuring drones, manufacturing chips in India

• Preventing misuse of the emerging tech (eg: AI/Quantum)

• Using new ways to diagnose and treat the cancer and diabetes

• Human spaceflight to ISS & Indian astronauts in space (June 2024)

• Accelerate global clean energy transition & tackling climate change

• Technical cooperation via Critical and emerging technologies (iCET)

• New consulates: US in Bengaluru and Ahmedabad, India in Seattle

• People to people ties emphasized with 4mn Indian Americans in US

• Other decisions: Artemis Accords, General Electric to manufacture jet engines in India

Quotes from PM’s Speeches

• Terrorism is an enemy of humanity and there can be no ifs or buts to dealing with it

• Democracies matter and the democracies deliver. It is a spirit that supports equality and dignity

• The scope of our cooperation is endless. The potential of our synergies is limitless and the chemistry in our relations is effortless. Our relationship is spread from the sees to the stars!

• This is not era of war but one of dialogue and diplomacy. And, we all must do what we can to stop the bloodshed and human suffering

• Democracy is the idea that welcomes debate and discourse, democracy is a culture that gives wings to thoughts and expression.

• Hesitations of the history are behind us now. We are at crossroad where this is our calling for the century

• When India grows, the world grows

  • When defense and aerospace in India grow, industries in the state of Washington, Arizona, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania thrive

• On China (indirectly)

  • A region where all nations, small and large are free and fearless in their choices, where progress is not suffocated by impossible burdens of debt, where connectivity is not leveraged for strategic purposes, where all nations are lifted by the high tide of shared prosperity.

Important details

General Electric - Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Deal Significance

• India’s first indigenous fighter jet LCA Tejas is powered by GE’s F404 engines

• India failed to develop a jet engine despite DRDO’s multiple efforts

• Only few countries have mastered the tech & metallurgy to make combat engines

• This deal offers important economic and national security benefits for India-US

• GE in India: Tech Centra in Bengaluru (since 2000) and Multi modal factory in Pune (since 2015)

• Other tech transfer talks happening b/w India and Safran SA of France and Rolls-Royce of UK for Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA)

INDUS-X: India-US Defense Acceleration Ecosystem

• It is launched at an event coinciding with PM’s visit (not launched by PM/POTUS)

• Help armed forces with capabilities to defend a free and open Indo-Pacific

• Allows Indian-US startups to co-develop & co-produce advanced technologies

• It will vitalize defense industrial cooperation unlocking new innovations in tech

• Agenda

  • Formation of a senior Advisory Group

  • Collaborations of startups with defense major’s supply chains

  • Academic and startup programming partnerships with universities

  • Mentor-protege partnerships for startups by defense firms of both countries

• Possibilities

  • Joint innovation fund to engage private investors

  • Standardization of Indo-US certifications for tech startups

  • Easing regulations for cross border development and trade

  • Public private partnerships in innovation, testing and lab certification

Artemis Accords

• Estd. in Oct 2020 by US and 7 partner countries; 26 countries signed till now

• A US led alliance for int’l collaboration in planetary exploration and research

• Set of 13 principles to promote peaceful and cooperative exploration of space

• The principles are mostly reiterate establishing international law on space exploration. eg

  • Commitment to not use space for military purposes

  • Willingness to share scientific data from space missions

  • Promise to cooperate on matters of safety of space assets and astronauts

• Closely linked with NASA’s Artemis Program aiming to:

  • Returning to moon

  • Setting up permanent station there

  • Using this station for deep space exploration

  • Artemis also intends to take first woman and first person of color to the moon

• Artemis-1 Mission launched on Nov 16 2022:

  • Sent unmanned Orion spacecraft

  • Carried heavy duty rocket called Space Launch System (SLS)

  • Went around moon and came back on December 11

• China and Russia are not part of initiative seeing it as US dominance in the space

• India’s signature does not open automatic partnership in Artemis Program but opens possibilities of closer space cooperation

India in Minerals Security Partnership

US led 14 countries collaboration aiming to catalyze public and private investment in critical Mineral Supply chains globally
- Members: US, Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, S. Korea, Sweden, UK, European Commission, Italy and (now) India
- Could focus on the supply chains of the minerals such as cobalt, nickel, lithium, and 17 Rare earth materials
- Cobalt, Nickel, Lithium are required for the batteries used in EVs
- Rare Earth Elements (REE)

use in trace amounts in the semi-conductors and high end electronics manufacturing
a) comprises of 17 elements classified as Light REE and Heavy REE
b) India has Lanthanum, Cerium, Neodymium, Praseodymium, and Samarium (Light REE)
c) Heavy REE like Dysprosium, Terbium, Europium not available in India deposits
d) High dependency on China for HREE (70% global production)

Amrican Exceptionalism to American Excpetion-ism

- US making exceptions for India away from the world

- Recent examples:

a) CAATSA exemption for India despite buying S-400 from Russia while Turkey and China sanctioned u/ CAATSA for same

b) No Secondary US-sanctions on India for Russian trade in wake of Ukraine war

c) Exceptions in Int'l Religious Freedom Act for last 4 years

Why?

- India's democratic values, ancient and historically; serves US purposes in power game

- India's geography in south Asia and boundary with China

- Economy market and military buyer

- India-American diaspora

PM’s gifts to the Mr. and Mrs. Biden

• For POTUS Biden

  • The Ten Principles Upanishads

    • A book translated from Sanskrit by Shri Purohit Swami and great Irish poet WB Yeats (Nobel Prize Winner in 1923)

    • President Biden has Irish roots

    • Yeats was friends with Gurudev Tagore and worked well in bringing Indian texts to westerns audiences

  • A sandalwood box from Jaipur containing Lord Ganesh idol and diya

    • It also carries 10 small boxes with different items from different states as seen in the image below

      

• For FLOTUS Dr. Biden

  • A 7.5 carat lab grown diamond from Surat in a papier mache box known as kar-e-kamaldani from Kashmir

  • Marking 75 years of Indian independence, the diamond is 7.5 carat

  • Such diamonds are produced with Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) tech or High Pressure, High Temperature (HPHT) method

  • Takes 2 months to complete the process of producing one such diamond

  • It is eco-friendly for it is made via wind and solar energy and emits only 0.028 grams of carbon per carat

  • Falls in the category of 2A type diamonds purity (top grade molecular purity) seen in Kohinoor like diamond

    • such diamonds are naturally found only in mines of Golconda (India) and Canada

  • Said to have been certified by International Gemological Institute (IGI)

    • World’s largest certification player for lab grown diamonds

    • Second largest player for certifying natural diamonds

Partnerships and Initiatives

Indo Pacific Deal

• Joining of Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative

• Initiative seeks to promote a safe, secure, and stable domain and promote its conservation & sustainable use

People Centric Efforts

• Domestic renewals of plea-based temporary work visas of Indians

• Indian consulate in Seattle, US consulates in Bengaluru and Ahmedabad

• Joint task force to advance cooperation b/w leading scholars on climate change

Health

• Collaboration among scientists to develop AI enabled digital pathology to be used for cancer diagnosis

• Diabetes collaborations in progress

Sustainable Development

• National climate and energy goals on mind

• Commitment reinforced towards creating innovative investment platforms for lowering cost of capital to attract private finance internationally for multiple projects in India

Terror and Drugs

• Broader and deeper bilateral counter-narcotics framework under development to disrupt illicit production and trafficking of drugs

• Cross border terror condemned, Pak urged to take immediate action to ensure that none of its territory is used for launching terrorist attacks

• Call for:

  • Trial of perpetrators of 26/11

  • Concerted action against all UN listed terror groups: al-Qaida, ISIS, LeT, JeM, Hizbul Mujhahideen

Defense

• F414 jet engine joint production in India (GE x HAL)

• MQ-98 Sea Guardian UAVs to India for intelligence, surveillance etc.

• Master Ship Repair Agreement (MSRA) b/w US Navy w/ L&T Shipyard in Chennai

• INDUS-X for join defense tech innovation

Technology

• Semiconductors

  • Test facility in India

  • Centre for Commercialization and Innovation

  • 60K Indian engineers to be trained by Lam Research

• India in Minerals Security Partnership

• Task force on development and deployment of Open RAN systems

• ISRO astronauts trained by NASA for joint ISS flight (2024)

• Human spaceflight cooperation by end of 2023

Others

• Boeing to invest $100mn in infra, pilot training

• India, US to end 6 WTO disputes, lift some tariffs

Opinion: Dr. C Raja Mohan

1. The sweeping ambition of the agreements unveiled by PM Modi and POTUS Biden is breathtaking

2. The duo of PM and POTUS has nudged India and US on the road not travelled before- towards a join construction of a stable Asian balance of power system

3. The new India-US defense partnership makes it possible to conceive of an Asia that is not vulnerable to domination by any one power

4. This defense cooperation stems from an unmistakable convergence of Indo-US geopolitical and geo-economic interests in Asia

5. In technology, The story is no longer about the US selling arms to India, it's about Indian companies participating in the defense supply chains of American companies.

6. US-India security partnership in the US-India security partnership now becomes a new and significant variable in Asian geopolitics.

Hi, at @CSEWhy I invite you to support me! You can do that in three simple ways:

1. Become a blog contributor and have your write ups featured on my blog. Write me an email if you’d want to be a contributor at whycse@gmail.com

2. Share the link to this post on your WhatsApp story

3. -OR-  Contribute a small amount (Pay What You Want) by clicking here (I send a valuable gift to everyone who makes a contribution)

To find links to my Twitter, Telegram, YouTube and Podcast Visit my Website