JUNE 8, 2016. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi rose to address the joint sitting of the US Congress, he was greeted with a standing ovation. In the chair were US Vice-President Joe Biden and the House Speaker Paul Ryan. At his eloquent best, Modi told Congress members that relations between the two countries had “overcome the hesitations of history” and concluded with a line from Walt Whitman’s ‘To Think of Time’: “The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments—the baton has given the signal.” A new symphony, he added, is in play.
Cut to June 22, 2023. The new symphony Modi talked of in 2016 was in full play. Nine years into his prime ministership, he looked far more assured as he addressed the US Congress a second time—an honour bestowed on only a few world leaders. Just the previous day, Biden, now the President, had rolled out the red carpet for him, even upgrading the summit to a state visit with all the attendant pomp and pageantry, besides hosting a private dinner for Modi. “In the past few years, there have been many advances in AI—Artificial Intelligence,” Modi told Congress members with a smile. “There have been even more momentous developments in another AI—America and India.”
Indeed, there have been. Under Modi’s stewardship, the past nine years have seen the US emerge as India’s largest trading partner with total trade more than doubling to $191 billion (Rs 15.67 lakh crore). The US has also upgraded India as a major defence partner, clearing it for licence-free access to a wide range of military and dual-use technologies it had denied earlier. On its part, India has inked all the four foundational agreements the US needs for its entities to sell it hi-tech armament. These include logistics support, secure communications, geospatial intelligence cooperation and ensuring sensitive military data is not leaked. The US has sold over $20 billion (Rs 1.64 lakh crore) of military equipment since 2008 to India, much of it in the past decade. Among them is the P-8I long-range maritime surveillance aircraft, C-17 and C-130J heavy-lift military transport aircraft, the Apache and Chinook helicopters, Harpoon missiles, M777 Howitzers and Sig Sauer assault rifles.
All these had laid the foundation for the quantum leap in relations that the June 22 summit meet between
