The first India-US Strategic and Commercial Dialogue kicked off with a high-profile event addressed by US Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and attended by around 400 business leaders from both countries.
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The business conclave held on Monday on the eve of the first Strategic and Commercial Dialogue at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium, Washington D.C., would set the stage for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s forthcoming meeting with President Barack Obama this week.
While it would create wealth for the U.S. companies, it would also add value to the Indian society, besides helping build long term links with India’s economic growth story and strengthen economic underpinnings of the India-US strategic partnership. And I want to recognize our terrific ambassador who I worked with many years up on the Hill, Rich Verma, and also the ambassador from India to the United States, Arun Singh. “The United States is one of India’s largest defence suppliers”.
“The President and I, and the entire administration believe that the India-US relationship will be a relationship that will go a long way in defining the 21st century”, he said. Mr Biden added that entrenched interests always preferred status quo and called for more reforms to achieve the full potential of bilateral trade and cooperation.
“India In The Caribbean” is a classic presentation, away from the routine issues such as cramped huts, and singles out some of the achievements of the Indian diaspora today which are both educational and forward-looking, thus ensuring a firm place in the overall scheme of challenges which they faced earlier on in their sojourn to Trinidad and Tobago and by extension the Caribbean. “So we need to see more reforms to protect intellectual property”, Biden said in his key note address to the 40th annual gala of U.S. India Business Council (USIBC).
So I’d just close by saying to everybody here the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue that we are entering into tomorrow is one the most important that we have with any country on the planet.
Indian Minister of External Relations Swaraj told the conference that Indian-US relations were succeeding based on shared values. But it’s a great pleasure to recognize the extraordinary work of the U.S.-India Business Council. I want to express support for Prime Minister Modi’s plan to help India’s economy become more reliant on renewable sources of power.
Quoting Indian Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore’s words that “We can not cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water”, Biden invited the two sides to “cross the sea together”. We live up to our responsibilities with respect to children who are hospitalized.
The focus now is on building 100 smart cities; rejuvenating the Ganges river and developing cities along its banks and skilling 300 million youth by 2022, she said, while addressing America’s top corporate leadership.
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“We will also stress the importance of technical cooperation and exchange between regulators and the need for establishing a technical dialogue”. And although differences of ideology have separated us in the past, and the Vice President referred to that a little bit, the most – we are in the end, and I think that’s what brings you here, the most natural of partners.
