Tag Archives: scientific partnership

India-US Relations Blog

Yesterday, once more?

Leave a comment

And just like that, the much awaited, once postponed India-US Strategic Dialogue came and went, with not even the the tiniest frisson of excitement of that had accompanied previous Dialogues. Minders on both sides must have been secretly pleased that the Murdoch slugfest in London came in as a suitable excuse to explain away the limited interest and analysis of the Strategic Dialogue in the media. With new lists of grievances building up on both sides to replace the long-drawn out lists of the Cold War era, the Strategic Dialogue process has had the unintended consequence of focusing attention on these issues for which all available political capital has been expended or there is no solution even at the highest political levels.  Given this reality, the reports of half-hearted wagging of fingers and admonishments behind closed doors were more for the benefit of respective constituencies than to move the process forward. The overriding urge to prevent any SNAFUs meant that Mrs. Clinton proposal to visit Kolkata as part of itinerary was shot down by the hosts. And whilst Mrs. Clinton broke bread with all her leading interlocutors, from the Prime Minister downwards, the glaring exception was Defence Minister A K Antony, for whom the Dialogue that was to take place in April had been postponed since he was ostensibly busy with the Kerala elections.

01-1The U.S. side, in particular, has become a master at the art of coming out with comprehensive factsheets laying out the massive advances in joint projects, emphasizing the width and breadth of the partnership.   With many of the bilateral agreements signed over the years stuck at various stages of implementation, it is almost as if both sides were virtually scrapping the bottom of the barrel this time around to come out with agreements on cyber security cooperation and cooperation in aviation safety. This is not to belittle the importance of these agreements, and particularly the one on cybersecurity. However, the impression one gets is that there is still a sufficient amount of mistrust on both sides to ensure that even this initiative will live uptoits potential for some time to come. By way of comparison, the agreement between cyber adversaries Russia and the United States on cyber security cooperation signed just the previous week is much more specific on actions and timelines.

But it is not as if Mrs Clinton would be particularly disappointed by either the dampened expectations or outcome of her visit. From an American perspective, given the flux in the wider Asian region, accelerating the strategic partnership with India in the security and defence realms, especially if it is only on the back of unilateral concessions, will only fetch diminishing returns. One only needs replace India with the U.S. in the previous sentence to come up with the Indian view. On the American side, there is reasonable confidence that an increasingly powerful and belligerent China will eventually drive India into U.S. arms. In the meantime, there is plenty of other fish to fry, particularly when it comes to pushing the economic and people-to-people aspects, part of larger initiativesthat Mrs. Clinton has focused on since taking up stewardship of the State Department.  And therefore it is not surprising that out of the many factsheets brought out by the Department at the end of the visit, it is those on economic ties and education and people-to people ties that have the most substance. While the former leads with talks on a Bilateral Investment Treaty, there is a consolation prize in the establishment of the first ever Consular Dialogue to take place on July 25 “for a full discussion of visa and other consular matters”. From Tri-Valley to the harassment of H1B visa holders and diplomatic pat-downs, there will be much to discuss at this Dialogue. Considering that a similar Consular Dialogue has been part of the EU-IndiaStrategic Dialogue since 2000 and the India-Australia Dialogue more recently,one wonders why this did not come into being earlier even earlier.

On the education and people-to-people front, the noteworthy developments are the publication of the first request for proposals under the aegis of the Obama-Singh Knowledge Initiative with the fields of focus being Energy Studies, Sustainable Development, Climate Change, Environmental Studies, Education and Educational Reform, and Community Development and Innovation. How different this Initiative is from existing programs being carried out under the India U.S. Science and Technology Forum remains to be seen.  The other interesting program to watch out for would be the newly launched Passport to India which will facilitate increasing number of American students to come to India for periods ranging from three weeks to six months, to match the 100,000 odd Indian students in the United States. This, too, has an economic focus since the students will be here on internships with companies rather than for study programmes.

The silver lining in this particular cloud might be this; with both sides forced by exigencies to dial down the relationship a notch, this provides some breathing space to consolidate the initiatives that have been taken up in previous years. The U.S. State Department Inspector General’s office  has recommended that a separate office be established for India since “nations of comparable importance and with important bilateral relationships, such as China, Russia, Cuba, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, have their own offices”. A similar initiative on the Indian side would go a long way in implementing the many worthy initiatives of the Strategic Dialogue and make it less of the annual junket that it is being perceived to be.

India-US Relations Blog

Winning the Future Together

Leave a comment

The global ascendance of India as an economic power, technology hub and a source of professional talent will create major opportunities for Indian and multinational businesses alike. But this development has also injected a not-insignificant measure of zero-sum thinking into US-India economic affairs, especially in the area of human capital. These contradictory themes are a growing source of irritation, but if managed smartly could also be a good opportunity for advancing the bilateral relationship.

These contradictions have been in full view in recent months. Last year saw the rise of a populist anti-India backlash as Americans increasingly blamed the country for their economic hardships. Election campaigns trafficked in the outsourcing issue, Congress enacted heavy India-specific fee hikes on the H-1B temporary visa program for skilled foreign workers, and President Obama called for tightening tax penalties on corporate outsourcing in language that pitted U.S. prosperity against that of India’s.

Yet when Mr. Obama arrived in India for a state visit last November, his rhetoric markedly shifted. The country was now portrayed as an economic opportunity too golden to pass up; indeed, the main purpose of his visit seemed to be securing as many commercial deals for American companies as possible. In an address to Indian corporate leaders in Mumbai, he emphasized that “in our interconnected world, increased commerce between the United States and India can be and will be a win-win proposition for both nations. I realize that for some, this truth may not be readily apparent.” For good measure, he added that “there still exists a caricature of India as a land of call centers and back offices that cost American jobs. But these old stereotypes, these old concerns ignore today’s reality.”

The antinomies of the bilateral economic relationship similarly were on display in Obama’s State of the Union address in January. He cited the growth of science and technology capacity in China and India as a threat to America’s competitive edge, while also acknowledging that continued U.S. prosperity requires greater access to the human capital originating from both countries. The success of U.S. enterprises engaged in the advanced technology sectors Mr. Obama identified in his address as key to “winning the future” will increasingly depend on access to the global reservoir of skilled professionals, of which India is a major contributor. The president admitted as much when he criticized the self-defeating nature of U.S. immigration policy: “[Students] come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities.  But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us.  It makes no sense.”

The President has regularly sounded off on this latter theme, most recently in a series of events over the last month aimed at reviving the issue of immigration reform.  In a speech in El Paso earlier this month, for example, he noted that:

[W]e provide students from around the world with visas to get engineering and computer science degrees at our top universities. But our laws discourage them from using those skills to start a business or power a new industry right here in the United States. So instead of training entrepreneurs to create jobs in America, we train them to create jobs for our competition. That makes no sense. In a global marketplace, we need all the talent we can get – not just to benefit those individuals, but because their contributions will benefit all Americans.

The President added that “We don’t want the next Intel or Google to be created in China or India. We want those companies and jobs to take root in America.”*

Obama’s remarks picks up a proposal he made during the last presidential campaign to create a “fast track” mechanism allowing foreign students with advanced technical degrees from U.S. institutions to receive an employment-based visa. At present, 20,000 H-1B visas are reserved for such graduates – many of whom are Indian – though demand greatly eclipses this number.

Although immigration policy remains a hotly-contested issue, the adverse consequences of limiting U.S. access to foreign-born skilled labor are widely acknowledged. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for example, is at the head of a broad group of civic and business leaders calling for a job-creation strategy based on visa reform.

The United States has been able to maintain its global preeminence in no small part due to the influx of foreign science and engineering professionals and graduate students. Immigrants comprise nearly half of the science and engineering workforce holding PhD degrees. High-skilled immigrants are a significant driving force of American prosperity and innovation, most famously in building the information technology industry.  Research indicates, for instance, that Indian immigrant entrepreneurs play a leading role in founding some of the most dynamic high-tech companies. Studies also point to the valuable entrepreneurial streak immigrants possess: They are 30 percent more likely to form new businesses than native-born Americans, and foreign-born university graduates are some three-times more likely to file patent applications than US-born citizens.

Foreign-born scientific and engineering talent – particularly Indian – is an important pillar of the faculties in America’s top universities. And foreign students earn the majority of engineering doctoral degrees awarded by U.S. universities, and of this number a large percentage opt to remain in the country for some period of time. Their presence, along with other high-skilled immigrants, has helped the U.S. technology workforce expand at a faster rate than the United States is graduating native-born scientists and engineers.

America’s dependence on foreign-born technology professionals will shortly become all the greater. Since younger native-born workers tend to lack the skill levels of their baby boomer parents now nearing retirement age, the United States could face broad and substantial skill shortages in the coming decade. Thus, the United States should be promoting greater access to the global talent pool, and India is a good place to start.

With India a major source of high-skill professionals and the U.S. needing to draw on foreign talent to fortify its own science and engineering workforce, both countries have a keen mutual interest in cooperating in the area of human capital, the most critical resource in the dawning global innovation economy. To this end, Washington and New Delhi should conclude a bilateral agreement guaranteeing a set number of temporary work visas for high-skill Indian professionals. The United States has crafted bilateral agreements with a select number of other countries that could serve as a template, including the TN temporary visa program (created via the North American Free Trade Agreement) that exempts qualified Canadian and Mexican professionals from the annual quota on H-1B work permits.

Admittedly, important constituencies in both countries regard the global talent pool as a zero-sum equation.  In the United States, some argue that increased mobility of foreign high-skill workers will displace or depress wages of native professionals. The empirical evidence, however, suggests that greater numbers of talented immigrants actually supports job creation in the United States and that immigrant entrepreneurs complement rather than crowd out native-born counterparts.

India likewise would stand to benefit from the increased mobility of its technology professionals. Instead of causing “brain drain,” the global innovation economy is actually generating “brain circulation” or a “brain chain,” in which expatriate talent returns home with acquired capital, skills and knowledge, as well as personal links to transnational entrepreneurial and technological networks. Obviously, some of the high-skill Indians who benefit from the bilateral immigration accord will choose to remain permanently in the United States, though they would in time contribute a significant stream of remittance income and serve an important bridging function between Indian innovators and entrepreneurs and those in other countries.  But others, empowered by new ideas and experiences, will return in time and play a direct role in the nation’s development; indeed, this process is already underway (see here and here).

The United States and India are prime constituents in the brain circulation process. Far from seeing access to the global talent pool as a competitive proposition, the interdependency of their skills base requires them to act in a cooperative, synergistic way. Doing so not only makes sound economic sense for both countries, but would also strengthen the foundation of US-India relations.

* Ironically, as Mr. Obama was uttering these words, the Indian science minister was lamenting that the country’s lack of innovation infrastructure keeps India from producing companies like Google and Blackberry.


India-US Relations Blog

India-US Medical Alliance will cut deficit

1 Comment

The U.S. is – and will continue to be for at least a generation more – the primary engine driving the international economy. If Asia has made progress during the post-colonial period (i.e.after 1947), one of the major reasons is the U.S. economy. Although the Eurocentric administrations in Washington DC refused to sanction a Marshall Plan for Asia the way they implemented for Europe, the private industry has made up for a lot of the slack. Although the Vietnam war of the 1960s and beyond was a disaster in several ways, including the devastation it caused to that land and people without being able to prevent the takeover of the country by the Viet Minh, yet the purchases of goods and services made by the U.S. from the countries of East and South-east Asia for prosecuting  the war created tigers out of pussycats. Even Hong Kong developed,once the British withdrew east of Suez and lost interest in the day-to-day running of the colony.

India under Indira Gandhi missed the US-driven bus. Unlike Thailand, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, she refused to create the conditions needed for Indian businesses to take advantage in the spurt of U.S. procurement created by the Vietnam war. Indeed, she turned away from such opportunities, even rejecting an invitation to be a part of ASEAN. As for industry, Indira Gandhi continued with Jawaharlal Nehru’s policy of strangling the private sector through taxes and regulation, and creating state-owned monopolies that were citadels of incompetence and corruption. Small wonder that SE Asia and East Asia rapidly overtook India and entered the fold of middle-income countries two decades before India finally began to catch up in the mid-1990s,  a rise that has been threatened by the sharp increase in regulation seen in the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA since 2004.

Despite the return of frank Nehruism in central policy, India still remains a country where the newly-empowered private sector is fighting back. Honest corporates are happy at the increase in public awareness of the fact that it is graft on a monumental scale that is keeping them in such misery. Those traveling by the potholed roads of India; enduring power cut after power cut despite sky-high electricity prices; going through substandard public schooling at a time when the UPA is seeking to choke the private education sector through fresh regulations; and suffering such depredations as income-tax raids conducted just to collect bribes for settlement, are now coming on to the streets. If not in 2012, certainly by 2013, India will have its own Tahrir Square, with millions likely to picket the homes of the powerful trinity of corrupt bureaucrats, businesspersons and politicians who have aped the British colonial authorities by enriching themselves through impoverishing the country. For the first time since the 1950s, India seems to be on a path towards cleaner government and greater powers to the ordinary citizen vis-a-vis the colonial-style state,largely because of the pressure from the Supreme Court and the fact that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is personally honest,and hence has no personal interest in continuing to cover up corruption.

This is the ideal time for a great democracy to create multiple linkages with India, so that civil society in both countries can benefit. In the field of energy, this writer has already pointed out how the negative bias of the non-proliferation lobby in the U.S. is creating the conditions for an Indo-Russian atomic alliance from which the U.S. will get excluded. Healthcare is another field in which India has several advantages. Indeed, it is this potential that is scaring pharmaceutical and fat-cat medical lobbies in Europe, making them invent risks in India that are unproven by scientific evidence. The Lancet, for example (whose advocacy of the medical mafia in the developed world is transprent) has been printing report after report warning individuals to keep away from India. The latest smear is that the country is swarming with a “superbug”. Unexplained is why such a “deadly” microbe has made zero dent on the country’s population, or in its health services. The reality is that cooperation with India will cost the medical mafia in several countries their millions of euros, hence the hysteria against India.

The fact is that only – repeat only – an alliance with India can reduce healthcare costs in the U.S. and the EU to levels that are compatible with continued prosperity. Instead of blocking low-cost Indian pharmaceuticals from entering their (or other) markets by the foisting of cases and by other means, EU governments should get their corporates to form alliances with Indian companies that can ensure low-cost healthcare to billions of people in Europe, India and in North America.

However, given their mindset (which is clearly still lost in nostalgia for the colonial era), it is unlikely that the EU will follow such a rational path. On the contrary, we can expect several more efforts to malign both the country as well as its medical profession, because of the fact that it can provide healthcare at a fraction of the cost charged by the medical mafia. Rather, it is the U.S. that needs to take the lead in forming an alliance with India, that would ensure enhanced Indo-US production of cheaper drugs and cheaper procedures. Unless this be done, the U.S. budget deficit will continue to balloon to a level that threatens the future of the world’s biggest economy. The sharing of healthcare facilities by India and the U.S. will ensure the saving of tens of billions of dollars every year, and in time form a fusion that can bring healthcare to the doorsteps of the needy in every country.