Speeches & Articles
Remarks of Consul General Henry V. Jardine to The Indo-American Chamber of Commerce “INDO-U.S. RELATIONS – RISING TO NEW HEIGHTS”
Bengal Club, Kolkata
October 19, 2005
The Honorable Chief Secretary Mr. Amit Kiran Deb, Mr. Ashok Aikat, Members of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to make a few remarks on “Indo-U.S. Relations: Rising to New Heights.”
However before I start, I would like to express my condolences and those of the U.S. Consulate for the victims of the recent earthquake in Jammu and Kashmir. The earthquake was a devastating natural disaster that destroyed the lives of thousands, but the subsequent examples of human courage demonstrated by the people of India and Pakistan have been a great inspiration to see and hopefully a sign of future closer cooperation.
In discussing Indo-American relations, I can add that one personal development in our relations was my recent arrival here in Calcutta just two months ago. I consider myself very fortunate to be here now, in this very dynamic and economically growing region, at a time when relations between the United States and India are becoming so close – as we forge a stronger Global Partnership.
Demonstrating our two countries’ growing global cooperation, this past July Prime Minister Singh, while in the United States, signed a broad ranging agreement enhancing our strategic partnership. The three important areas of that partnership included:
- Putting in place economic policies that will unleash private investment and create new jobs across India – including here in West Bengal.
- Assuring that India’s energy requirements are met through the use of new and renewable technologies, including civil nuclear; and
- Building regional stability through strategic and military cooperation.
As U.S. Ambassador to India David Mulford said when he made his remarks to members of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce in Calcutta this past August:
U.S. – India relations are at an all-time high . . . . Our two great pluralistic democracies are now positioned for a partnership that will be crucial in shaping the international landscape of the 21st century.
In the context of economic and commercial ties, those relations have never been better. The U.S. exports to India are up by 50% and India’s exports to the U.S. are also up by 15% for the first quarter of 2005. The recent Open Skies Agreement with India is already increasing air traffic and creating new jobs.
Reflecting the rapid economic changes here in this State, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) reported recently that from 2001 to 2004, a period coinciding with the present Chief Minister’s tenure, West Bengal saw an impressive 15 percent growth in the State’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). West Bengal is now the third fastest growing economy in the country. Its GDP in the service sector since 2001 has grown at a blistering 25 percent. Banking and insurance led that sector with 56 percent growth from 2001 to 2004. Finance, real estate and other business services grew by 43 percent during the same period.
This renewed commitment on both sides to building the economic relationship has been noticed in the U.S. business community. Our engagement has strengthened business confidence. The U.S. Mission is welcoming more U.S. business delegations in India than at any other time, including many sponsored by individual U.S. states. Here in West Bengal, we are seeing the expansion of U.S. businesses and the presence of large brand names like IBM, American Express, and others.
To enhance this relationship, one economic initiative that was started just recently was the CEO Forum. The Forum consists of twenty of the most prominent CEO business leaders in the U.S. and India, ten on each side. They have been asked by President Bush and Prime Minister Singh to identify ways for our two governments to further build business confidence and remove barriers to trade and investment to propel growth, job creation, and delivery of social benefits to our people. This Forum is entirely independent of our two governments and collectively represents trillions of dollars of investment capital. In fact, one of the Forum members is a part investor in the Second Vivekananda Bridge that is presently being constructed near Calcutta.
The key aspect of the growing economic opportunity is also that the State Governments follow through on the progress being made at the national and international levels. Private enterprise and the free market is the key to long-term progress. If policies are designed well, investment will flow and economies will flourish. The increasing interest by U.S. businesses in setting-up or expanding their operations in West Bengal -- such as PepsiCo’s recent expansion announcement -- is evidence of the this truism.
Governments do play an important role in setting the fair ground rules for much economic activity and the State Government of West Bengal plays a very critical role at the local level in implementing the strong U.S.-India partnership for facilitating investment and ensuring that regulations that create a dynamic commercial and economic environment.
The most prominent challenge is world-class infrastructure, which India must provide as a platform for sustained higher growth and rural development, especially in agriculture. Bringing together federal and state authorities and public and private players is essential.
Opening up sectors of the economy where private investment is now restricted, such as retailing, real estate, food processing, small-scale industry, and telecommunications will improve rural connectivity and help generate the growth and revenue streams necessary to provide positive returns to infrastructure investment. With proper roads, water delivery systems, and cold storage chains, the recently liberalized food-processing industry, as well as other forms of agribusiness, could become important sources of consumer benefit and rural employment. To help address these needs, the newly inaugurated U.S.-India Agribusiness Initiative is aimed at building partnerships between U.S. and Indian agricultural institutions.
These areas have the potential to generate a virtuous economic circle, where rising productivity and certainty raise farm incomes and give rise to demand for manufactured products and services -- thereby benefiting all segments of the society. The experience of India and its Asian neighbors shows that continuing rural poverty stems not from too much economic reform but from too little.
It is increasingly understood that India has much to gain from bold initiatives that liberalize its economy and, in turn, generate broader political support through greater economic prosperity. Such reforms improve living standards in ways the average citizen can feel and understand. Impressive results in the IT and telecom sectors already demonstrate the dynamic of less regulation, free foreign direct investment, freer trade in services, and consumer benefit. Only a few weeks ago, InfoSys, which provides IT support to many U.S. companies, announced plans for a huge expansion in Calcutta.
Two other areas that will require concerted action if India is to attract the huge investment it requires are the creation of true national markets and full protection of intellectual property rights. India’s ability to implement a national VAT and remove fiscal and regulatory barriers to interstate trade will create true national markets of a size and scale necessary to for significant business commitments.
Continued progress in intellectual property rights, or IPR, is also necessary for India to attract more U.S. investment in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and clinical research. We share a major interest in science and technology, and India is proving to be a world-class player in these fields. As IPR protection improves, U.S. companies will become major investors, contributing capital, top quality science and technology, global management expertise, and new jobs.
As an example of this, just yesterday our two Governments signed The India-U.S. Science and Technology Agreement at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The agreement to will allow for exchange of data and establish collaborative projects in nanotechnology and biotechnology. Union Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said on signing the agreement, it “will be a great leap forward in joint cooperation.” An earlier effort in 1993 to negotiate a similar agreement stalled over disagreements regarding IPR provisions. This agreement will now serve hopefully as the first step in even more scientific cooperation in the areas of space, energy, health and other technologies.
Prime Minister Singh has also identified energy security as a priority that must be addressed if India is to achieve its ambitious growth agenda over the coming decades. Adequate and reliable supplies of energy at reasonable cost are essential to fuel India’s rapidly growing economy. With this in mind, our two nations launched the U.S.-India Energy Dialogue last May. The Energy Dialogue’s goal is to increase energy security for both our countries by diversifying how we get our energy by expanding cooperation in areas such as clean coal, civil nuclear energy, and new technologies that open opportunities in renewable energy. Streamlining and expediting this energy progress will be important from both private sector and government perspectives.
In addition, business activity and people-to-people engagement will be critical to the transformation of U.S.-India relations. To support this engagement, our Consulate and the U.S. Mission in India is very busy processing a huge workload of visas. The Consulate processes over 24,000 visas a year and India, as a whole, has a total volume of 400,000 U.S. visa applications – the second highest demand in the world. Indian students – nearly 80,000 – are the largest foreign student body on U.S. campuses. At the same time, we see U.S. MBA students coming to India to intern at BPO companies.
To help the business traveler, the State Department now has a Business Visa Center accessible on the Internet. This is the latest step in our continuing efforts to facilitate the issuance of visas for business travelers. The Business Visa Center assists businesses in the United States by providing information about the visa application process for business-related visitor visa travel to the United States. The Website explains the process to companies wishing to invite employees, clients and business partners to the United States. The Business Visa Center is accessible at
http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_2664.html.
It is also available by e-mail at BusinesVisa@state.gov.
The United States and India are also strengthening an increasingly dynamic strategic relationship. Cooperation on political issues -- from promotion of democracy abroad to global peacekeeping operations, to combating terrorism and WMD threats -- are at the core of the bilateral relationship. Defense cooperation has reached new levels and military cooperation in the tsunami disaster was unprecedented. Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed a New Defense Framework for the U.S.-India Defense Relationship on June 28th. This agreement will guide our defense relations for the next decade in a wide variety of areas, including the enlargement of defense trade, improved cooperation between our armed forces, co-production of military hardware, and greater technology transfer.
The successful cooperation of our two militaries during the response to the tsunami disaster last year has been followed more recently in September by much appreciated Indian military assistance to victims in the United States from Hurricane Katrina. These are remarkable examples of how far we have come, and the great potential we have for the future.
Again, as a sign of our strategic cooperation here in West Bengal, next month we will see a joint Air Force exercise: COPE-India. The exercise will be one of the largest exercises between our two air forces and will involve an extensive array of the latest air force technology.
These developments do not compromise India’s sovereignty or independence. These are agreements between two equal, important partners, who look to the future and understand what some of their shared values and objectives must be.
Finally, as two great democracies, the United States and India have committed to work together to advance the cause of freedom and democracy in the world. At the White House, President Bush and Prime Minister Singh agreed on a Global Democracy Initiative that outlines our two nations shared commitment to democracy and the belief that we have an obligation to the global community to strengthen values, ideals and practices of freedom, pluralism, and rule of law. With our solid democratic traditions and institutions, our two nations have agreed to assist other societies in transition seeking to become more open and democratic. We both recognize that democracy is central to economic prosperity and development and to building peaceful societies.
As an initial step in this effort, both the U.S. and India committed to establishing a virtual Coordination and Information Center to share best practices on democracy, identify opportunities for joint support, and highlight capacity-building training programs. The Virtual Democracy Center website can be found at http://democracy.state.gov.
The United States and India are also cooperating closely under the auspices of the Community of Democracies, supporting UN electoral assistance programs, and have each provided $10 million to the UN Democracy Fund.
In concluding, I hope I have explained how extensively the relationship between our two countries has expanded and strengthened. The cooperation is across a range of areas: economic, scientific, social and strategic. We can see the benefits of this enhanced relationship here in West Bengal with growing investment, economic growth and opportunity. I feel very fortunate to be here and at such an auspicious time and I look forward to working with you all in doing our individual parts to promote the closer cooperation between our two great democracies.
Thank you.