US sees great potential for doing business with India: envoy

By Arun Kumar

Washington, March 29 (IANS) With India embarked on transformative economic programmes, the US sees great potential for doing business with India and to work for India's rise as an economic powerhouse, according to Indian ambassador Arun Singh.

India, in turn sees the US as an indispensible partner in achieving its ambitious goals for such programmes as infrastructure, smart cities, Make in India, Digital India and renewable energy, he said at an event over the
weekend.,

"By investing in India's rise, the US has pledged its friendship to a country where 800 million youth under the age of 35 years are impatient for change and eager to achieve it," Singh said at the 20th Wharton India Economic Forum on "Evolving India-US Relations."

"Going forward, it is certain that India and the US will look at each other with greater degree of understanding than in the past," he said.

The ambassador noted that "public opinion in each country about the other, particularly among the youth, has shifted clearly in a favourable direction."

"However, we need to remain alive to the challenges of managing an expanding relationship without sufficient past history of deep engagement," he said.

Noting that "problems and differences will inevitably arise from time to time," the ambassador said: "They will need to be addressed and managed keeping in mind mutual interests and a longer team framework."

Singh noted that a few years ago, President Barack Obama characterised the India-US relationship as a 'defining partnership of the 21st Century'.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi too has termed the India-US partnership as a 'natural alliance,' he said.

"Our strategic convergence and the global importance of this convergence are captured in our diplomatic moniker: a Global Strategic Partnership," Singh said.

"Our partnership did not always appear so destined," Singh said tracing the history of the first five decades of India-US relationship.

These, he said, could well be described as one of "uneasy intersection" between the US pursuit of its global security interests and India striving to consolidate its hard won independence.

But in the last two decades, the world has changed through profound political, economic, social, demographic or technological transformation, he said.

This had "slowly but surely bringing our immediate interests also more in alignment and in line with our long-term commitment to shared values," Singh said.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)