Dr Anil K. Singh
With 290 electoral votes in his favour, compared to 214 secured by incumbent President Donald Trump, decks have been cleared for Joe Bidden and he has been declared president-elect. He is set to be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on 20 January 2021, irrespective of the outgoing President’s machinations of not accepting the verdict and trying to obstruct smooth transition of power on one pretext or the other. Biden in his acceptance speech has emphasised on the priorities to be addressed by his administration.
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Challenging tasks are ahead for Biden administration, both domestically and externally. Apart from addressing the pandemic, the president-elect is confronted with the herculean task of unifying a divided American society, toning up the health of an ailing economy, winning the confidence of America’s allies, ensuring increased participation of the US in the activities of the United Nations, especially by rejoining the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and WHO.
Recent couple of decades have witnessed that change of regime either in New Delhi or in Washington has little to do with the ongoing relations between India and the US as the relations are not based on whims and fancies but on stark geopolitical and geo-economic realities and convergence of respective national interests. From Clinton administration to Trump administration, relations between New Delhi and Washington have progressed satisfactorily and odds arising occasionally have often been sorted out through bilateral channels from time to time.
Biden, who served as Vice President under Obama administration, has already given a good account of his inclination towards improving American ties with India. At the time of approval of the historic Civil Nuclear Deal between the US and India, Biden, then leading the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had said that if Washington and New Delhi became closer friends then the world would be a safer place. Again in 2013, when he visited India in his capacity as Vice President, he had termed US-India partnership as the defining relationship of the 21st century. Biden’s nomination of Kamala Harris as his running Vice President mate raised high hopes in India that a Biden-Harris administration would build on the rich legacy of US-India friendship. Throughout their election campaign, Biden-Harris emphasised on further consolidating ties with India. Reacting to Trump’s calling India ‘filthy’ in the context of air pollution in the final presidential debate, Biden said that it was not “how you talk about friends and it’s not how you solve global challenges like climate change.” Retweeting on November 7, his op-ed in the latest issue of ethnic India West weekly, Biden wrote: “Kamala Harris and I deeply value our partnership and put respect back at the centre of our foreign policy.” Undeniably, these high hopes are well placed; nonetheless these have to be appraised at the face value of grim ground realities pervading currently in different sectors.
India’s record on human rights, transfer of high-tech, China and H-1B visa issue are the major vexing issues that experts think will be major factors deciding the future course of Indo-US relations. Both Biden and Harris have been vocal about India’s record on human rights, especially in the wake of the developments in Kashmir, suppression of dissent within the country and in regard to ongoing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Biden in his Agenda for Muslim-American Community had criticised the CAA along with NRC as inconsistent with the country’s long tradition of secularism.
Undoubtedly, India has for long maintained that the situation in Kashmir is an internal affair, not for mediation by outside powers and even declined outgoing President Trump’s mediatory offers on many occasions; nevertheless, as some experts have opined, that going by public statements and policy statements, both Biden and Harris have seemingly pointed out that their administration could entail the likelihood of holding India to account over its activities in Kashmir.
Biden’s Agenda for Muslim-Americans, which is available at his campaign website, says: “In Kashmir, the Indian government should take all necessary steps to restore rights for all the people of Kashmir and restrictions on dissent, such as preventing peaceful protests or shutting or slowing down the Internet, weaken democracy.” Harris has seemingly been more outspoken when she said in October 2019: “We have to remind Kashmiris that they are not alone in the world. There is a need to intervene if the situation demands.” One can hope that such an aggressive approach may not be adopted by Biden-Harris administration with regard to human rights in India.
China is going to be a major decisive factor in shaping up the Indo-US relations. On an average, almost every American administration has been reluctant to transfer high-tech defence technology to India unlike it did in the case of China in the past. If the Biden administration attempts to normalise relations with China resulting in easing of sanctions, the probability of transfer of high-tech defence technology to India from Washington would become dim. However, this possibility is ruled out by some experts who argue that the new administration would focus on human rights situation in China as well. Nevertheless, India needs to convince the Biden administration about its genuine strategic requirements to procure defence equipment and related technology for its own requirements.
The issue of H-1B visa is of immense significance for specialised and technically skilled workforce. Usually, 85, 000 H-1B visas are issued annually by the US government and almost three-fourth of all such visa holders in the US are from India. Many observers of Indo-US relations opine that negotiations over work visa have been an important part of the ties at large and when in June this year Trump administration suspended H-1B visa for the rest of the year, and subsequently, again in October the administration announced scrapping the lottery system in place to receive an H-1B visa that was to be replaced with a mechanism that accorded priority to the highest-paying jobs, Indian IT sector companies expressed concern over such moves.
Biden has promised not only to lift Trump’s freeze, but also announced to go a step further in reforming the temporary visa system. His promise of granting citizenship to thousands of Indians in the US is a welcome move.
The pattern of Indo-US relations is dictated by strategic and geo-economic national interests of each side and given the current situations at the regional and global levels, both countries are destined to move forward in providing fresh dynamism to international peace and security, strengthening of democracies taking the world to a new trajectory of stability and prosperity.
The writer is a senior journalist.
