Human rights groups and press freedom advocates are also pressing Biden to publicly raise concerns with Modi about democratic backsliding in his country. Since the start of the war, the Modi government has also dramatically increased its purchase of Russian oil. resolutions condemning Russia and refused to join the global coalition against Russia. Biden last year publicly called India’s response to the war in Ukraine “shaky.” India abstained from voting on U.N. The Biden-Modi relationship isn’t without tension. Biden, who has been in elected office more than half his life, often speaks of his father’s own struggles to maintain a foothold in the middle class as shaping his own worldview.īoth leaders seem to appreciate each other’s “scrappiness,” said the official, who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The family struggled to make ends meet, which meant Modi had to help his father run the shop. The prime minister was the third of six children born to Damodardas Modi, who ran a small tea shop at the local railway station in the tiny town of Vadnagar, in the western state of Gujarat. Still, the leaders have connected over each other’s relatively humble beginnings, according to a senior Biden administration official. The two leaders - Biden, a center-left Democrat, and Modi, a Hindu nationalist leading the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party - aren’t exactly cut from the same political cloth. “But the tenor and pace of engagement has escalated quite a bit.” “I think with Biden you don’t have these explosive warmth moments,” said Richard Rossow, chair of U.S.-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. U.S.-based General Electric is now awaiting approval from the administration to produce jet engines in India. defense contractors to transfer critical technology. Through the Quad, an international partnership of the U.S., Australia, India and Japan, the countries launched a plan in 2021 to donate 1.2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the Indo-Pacific.Įarlier this year, the two countries launched the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies, which sets the path for collaboration on semiconductor production, developing artificial intelligence, and a loosening of export control rules that could allow U.S. and India in 2022 climbed to a record $191 billion. In Ahmedabad, Modi praised Trump as a “unique friend of India,” and Trump called Modi “an exceptional leader.”Įven without big rallies, though, the Biden White House says there is still plenty of evidence that the U.S.-India relationship is growing. The two leaders more than doubled that crowd about five months later with a massive rally at a cricket stadium. Trump likened Modi to Elvis Presley for his star appeal at a joint rally in Houston in September 2019 that drew about 50,000 people to NRG Stadium. Nor will Biden and Modi be co-headlining raucous stadium rallies like Modi and President Donald Trump did together in Houston and Ahmedabad, Gujarat. In his post-presidency memoir, “A Promised Land,” Obama heaped praise on the former Indian premier as “wise, thoughtful, and scrupulously honest” and credited him as the “chief architect of India’s economic transformation.” Singh was the first leader Obama honored with a state visit during his presidency. “For both Biden and Modi, there is a convergence of interests and you can see both leaders are invested personally in moving ties ahead.”īiden and Modi haven’t developed the sort of tight bond that President Barack Obama had with Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh. Singh, a former Indian ambassador to the U.S. and India to advance the relationship,” said Arun K. “They get along well personally, but even more important, I think both realize it is in the interest of the U.S. But the frequent engagement between the leaders is seen by both sides as a reflection that, whatever their personal dynamics, Biden and Modi see the U.S.-India relationship as a defining one in the face of an increasingly assertive China and monumental challenges posed by climate change, artificial intelligence, supply chain resilience and other issues.
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