Modi in US: Behind breakthrough pacts, weeks of parleys

Exclusive conversations with multiple people on both sides who were either directly or indirectly involved in the talks

Three months, over a dozen drafts, sleepless nights, extensive internal consultations, virtual and in person negotiations, a bilateral process marked by remarkable cordiality and warmth, a mutual germination of ideas, and finally, a problem of plenty.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with US President Joe Biden in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on Thursday. (REUTERS)

This was the experience of negotiators from India and the US, as they drafted the most ambitious joint statement to have emerged in the history of the 75-year diplomatic relationship. While the text of the statement was not out, conversations with multiple people on both sides who were either directly or indirectly involved in the talks, on deep background, gave HT a sense of the process behind the outcome which they said was path-breaking.

The context

When they began negotiating, there was already a lot to work that had been done and provided a framework. Over the past few years, Delhi and Washington DC have intensified their exchanges in a wide range of areas. If the growing China challenge, and both visible and behind-the-scenes security cooperation, had made both systems recognise they can do more in the field of security, the pandemic, particularly vaccine collaboration, made both realise how mutual collaboration in health care can help. Climate has been both a shared concern, but also a source of divergence over historic responsibility and financing, while trade has witnessed a paradox, of growing volumes with deep and recurring disputes. The American need for talent and Indian hopes of elevating already existing educational ties into a genuine knowledge partnership had already moved the conversation in the domain.

But both systems acknowledge that it was truly the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) this year that provided a new framework. It caused palpable excitement on both sides about the potential collaboration in several new sectors. Defence industrial cooperation was suddenly a real possibility; semiconductor collaboration was on the table; both could work together on artificial intelligence and quantum research; and the telecom infrastructure needed a counter to China.

Both countries knew they could work together, not just with each other but also in third countries and wider regions, as the Quad experience had shown. Washington felt India was needed in the room in every domain; Delhi recognised how much Washington could help enable its ambitions of being a global player.

The process

Which is why when negotiators on both sides began talking, they knew that there was no shortage of issues. They were also clear from the outset that the visit provided an opportunity to focus on concrete outcomes, not just feel-good language. This relentless focus on results, tangible results, drove the whole process. Informal discussions prepared the ground of where the two could take discussions forward, particularly through iCET which had already provided a road map of collaboration.

As the host country, the US side gave a first draft to Indian counterparts. Indian officials from the ministry of external affairs went into a huddle, carefully looking at what was on the table. They then engaged their counterparts — particularly with the ministries of defence, commerce, electronics and information technology and the National Security Council (which is the lead institution for iCET) — and got a careful assessment of their needs and proposals. This process then eventually translated, over a few exchanges with the US side, into proposals and modifications from the Indian side into subsequent drafts.

The US side had its own inter-agency processes, which, in some ways, were far more complicated given the leap Washington was hoping to make in defence and tech ties. Acutely aware that there remained scepticism in the Indian defence and intelligence set-ups over the relationship with the US, the White House’s National Security Council, which had taken complete ownership of the India account and this visit, knew this was a moment to overcome the baggage of the past and truly show that US was a partner that could be relied upon. President Joe Biden had already set the stage by telling his team it was not “business-as-usual”, and cementing the partnership with India was a top priority. It helped overcome entrenched bureaucracies.

With the Pentagon, commerce and state departments, NSC worked closely to see what was possible in domains such as transfer of jet engine technology and came back to the Indian side with new proposals. It nudged private companies to invest in India, particularly in areas such as semiconductor manufacturing that the Indian side had told the US was a top priority for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In subsequent conversations, virtual and in person, mornings and nights, battling the tyranny of time zones, saddled with a hard deadline of June 22, the US and India talked to each other and talked to their own systems. Often, talking to each other was easier than talking to their own systems because, as Delhi and Washington found, they shared common goals, and they didn’t really have wide, unbridgeable differences. The issues revolved around how much the rest of their bureaucracies could move, how much they could firm up as concrete deliverables, and the policy tweaks that were needed to deliver. There were a range of modifications — think India’s semiconductor policy or US’s foreign military sales mechanisms in the past month — with an eye on what it may mean for the relationship. And certain decisions had to be moved up the ladder, directly to the PM and the President for political direction. There were moments of frustration indeed, but not at any point did negotiators feel defeated or lose enthusiasm about the task they were undertaking.

Problem of plenty

By the end of it, there was a problem of plenty. More and more agencies and departments suddenly wanted to hop on to the bandwagon, hoping to use the moment to get more deliverables in their domain. Good ideas kept brewing in interactions, often blurring lines between what was an Indian proposal and what was an American proposal. And at one point earlier this week, even as drafts had kept getting exchanged, negotiators put a hard stop and decided to finalise the text, pending the final talks between leaders on the day of the summit.

As an aside, one remarkable fact stood out. Several key negotiators from the Indian side were women, all distinguished professionals in their own right, who were engaging with the best and brightest in the American national security system to push forward India’s interests.

There was a time when Indian and American negotiators found it hard to agree on any substantial theme, discussions were marked by innate distrust, and both left with a deep sense of unhappiness. Today, both sides have walked away thrilled they are a part of history, that they delivered for their leaders, and have forged an agenda that will potentially lock both countries together for decades. Now, insiders quipped, what they need is a good night’s sleep, before they take on the next chapter of implementing ties and getting ready for the next big visit when Biden heads to India in September.