Will PM Modi & President Trump hit it off?

KV Prasad

ON Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have one of the most important bilateral meetings his government is looking forward to — an early engagement with the new President of the United States, Donald Trump.

Since his inauguration five months ago, both President Trump and Prime Minister Modi have had a couple of long-distance conversations, including an unusual call from the President congratulating the Prime Minister for the BJP sweep in Uttar Pradesh elections. 

That communication was certainly out of the ordinary. However, Trump is not a practising politician, who in office views developments through a diplomatic prism. President Trump is yet to offer a window to leaders around the globe to predict his next move as he continues to take decisions in pursuance of his declared priorities in the run-up to the elections.

The world is yet to come to terms from the shock announcement of the US pulling out from the  Paris Climate Change pact, charging it benefits India and China. This point was reiterated by the US Vice President Mike Pence just ahead of  Modi's visit to Washington DC.

The US Vice President's Pence remarks at an event quoted a study justifying the decision that the Climate Change pact would cost 6.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States over the next 25 years and India and China would have been the real beneficiaries. When the two leaders sit across the table, three broad issues should be high on the list of priority items. One, transactional — juxtaposing Make in India versus Make America Great Again; second domestic the perennial H1B Visa overhang; and the third, international the— Trump administration's engagement with both Pakistan and China, which casts a direct shadow on India in the region. While the Climate Change fume against India clearly remains on top of the new administration agenda, the biggest challenge for Modi will be to strike a balance with Trump since their avowed goals — Make in India versus America First — appear to cross each other's path.

For the past many years, successive governments are working to increase the share of manufacturing in India's growth story and shift base from overdependence on the services sector, which Modi is focussing on through his Make in India and Skill India programmes. Just last month, Indian IT major Infosys announced the intention to hire some 10,000 skilled workers in the United States with Indiana, the home state of Vice President Pence, as the first beneficiary. It came some two months after a bipartisan Bill was brought before the House of Representatives seeking to make call centres that shift call centres overseas ineligible for guaranteed loans or grants from the government. The US Call Centre and Consumer Protection Act, moved by Gene Green (Democrat) and David McKinley (Republican), has currently been referred to four Committees of jurisdiction. Though the H1B visas remains a legacy issue since the Obama days, the problem has got accentuated with the Trump administration articulating a stricter scrutiny through an Executive Order. There could be little or no room for negotiation on this barring India impressing on the new administration how contrary to public discourse in the US, the H1B visas are creating more jobs there. The idea is to make President Trump think India provides an opportunity and does not create a problem. Modi will have to add flesh to what he told to a Congressional delegation in February that movement of skilled professionals should be looked at from a “reflective, balanced and farsighted perspective”. The Modi government pitch to the White House on the issue can be an important ingredient for greater work required of India, Indian-Americans and Indian companies to till the Congressional field with a similar and strong narrative to take it forward since some enthusiastic Congressmen on the Capitol Hill are working on a legislation on visas. Modi would have to convince Trump that interests of India and the United States should be able to identify areas of interest where progress can be in furtherance of avowed objectives of either side considering that the bilateral engagement is spread across some 70 sectors. Over the past decade, bilateral trade between India and the United States has grown from $45 billion (2006) to $115 billion (2016). The only sore point from the American viewpoint is that the Balance of Trade too increased in favour of India, from $12.7 billion to $30.8 billion, for the corresponding period. There are signs that the Trump administration is not enthusiastic over US-India Strategic Dialogue initiated by both Washington and New Delhi during President Barack Obama's January 2015 visit. The idea was to strengthen economic engagement and have a mechanism to sort out issues. Two back-to-back annual dialogues were held with the US insisting on concluding the Bilateral Investment Treaty but India sought negations on its objections to the draft. New Delhi will have an opportunity to hear from the person who is altering the contours of traditional diplomacy and engagement with the world. Of greater interest will be the attitude of the new White House incumbent with regard to Pakistan. Initial voices indicate a different flavour but India knows that Islamabad and its powerful military has friends in the US Administration and strategic community in Washington and, more importantly, in the US Congress. Will the Trump-Modi moment be able to replay how in 1985  a White House official summed up the Ronald Reagan-Rajiv Gandhi meeting: "They really hit it off"

What's the agenda

Three issues on the list of priority items:

• Transactional: Juxtaposing Make in India versus Make America Great Again.
• Domestic: The perennial H1B Visa overhang.
• International: The Trump administration's engagement with both Pakistan and China, which casts a direct shadow on India in the region.

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