India and the US cannot be \u201cfighting everyday on trade\u201d issues while cooperating on defence, former US Ambassador to India Richard Verma has said, highlighting the need to \u201cfire on all cylinders\u201d to move ahead their strategic relations. Verma said Washington and New Delhi want an \u201cambitious relationship\u201d and to become natural allies for that they need to be \u201cfiring on all cylinders\u201d, including economic and military.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a full scale relationship, not just the defence relationship, not just the strategic relationship. We need to focus on the economic side too. We somehow need to navigate America First with Make in India,\u201d Verma said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t be fighting everyday on trade, cooperating on defence and think we are just going to have a great relationship. We need to be firing on all cylinders, that means economic, that means military,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He further stressed that the US needs to take its defence relationship with India to the next level. \u201cThat means we ought to be providing India with the most advanced technology, we ought to make sure that if India is in trouble they have the means to win, if they are challenged,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Delivering the third \u2018New India Lecture\u2019 organized by India\u2019s Consulate General in New York, Verma spoke at length on a wide range of topics pertaining to India-US relations, including H1B work visas, immigration as well as geo-political issues relating to China and Pakistan.<\/p>\n
Verma, Vice Chairman and Partner at the Asia Group and a board member of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum , said the India-US relationship has been a \u201cslightly underperforming\u201d one for decades. \u201cWe have got some history that weighs us down. We still have some trust issues and neither side wants to be in an alliance,\u201d he said in his address on \u2018US-India: Natural Allies Absent the Alliance\u2019.<\/p>\n
Responding to a question on concerns among Indian workers over the H1B visa, Verma said last year about 1.1 million visas were issued to Indian nationals to come to the US in every category and out of these, about 50,000-60,000 were H1B visas. \u201cA very small percentage of the visa pool is for H1 B visas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Verma, who had served as the US Ambassador to India from 2014 to 2017, said he had conveyed to Indian CEOs and software companies that they have to be aware of the \u201cpolitical realities\u201d in the US.<\/p>\n
Verma, who has previously served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, noted that \u201csome reforms are probably necessary\u201d, adding that the H1B visas are an important but \u201csmall part\u201d of the overall people-to-people relationship between India and the US. \u201cI think US-India trade relationship is one relationship where you can get distinct wins on both sides,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Highlighting the critical role of the diaspora in strengthening relations between India and the US, Verma said \u201cwe have to increase our people-to-people connections and we should be celebrating and standing up for the immigrants who come into this country and not looking at ways to shrink the pool of people coming here\u201d.<\/p>\n
On the trajectory of India-US relations under the Trump administration, Verma said looking at Washington\u2019s all other bilateral relations, the one with India is \u201cstill on a pretty good trajectory\u201d While things have been moving along on the strategic side, on the economic side there are some growing pains. However, he said he is \u201cmore concerned about how we treat people who may not necessarily look like and sound like the rest of middle America and that\u2019s the part I keep the most eye out for in this environment\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India and the US cannot be \u201cfighting everyday on trade\u201d issues while cooperating on defence, former US Ambassador to India Richard Verma has said, highlighting the need to \u201cfire on all cylinders\u201d to move ahead their strategic relations. Verma said Washington and New Delhi want an \u201cambitious relationship\u201d and to become natural allies for that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29163,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29161\/revisions\/29163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}