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Obama and Modi Joint OP-ED | A renewed U.S.-India partnership for the 21st century

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By Narendra Modi and Barack Obama September 30 at 8:00 AM
Narendra Modi is prime minister of India. Barack Obama is president of the United States.

As nations committed to democracy, liberty, diversity and enterprise, India and the United States are bound by common values and mutual interests. We have each shaped the positive trajectory of human history, and through our joint efforts, our natural and unique partnership can help shape international security and peace for years to come.

Ties between the United States and India are rooted in the shared desire of our citizens for justice and equality. When Swami Vivekananda presented Hinduism as a world religion, he did so at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. When Martin Luther King Jr. sought to end discrimination and prejudice against African Americans, he was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent teachings. Gandhiji himself drew upon the writings of Henry David Thoreau.

As nations, we’ve partnered over the decades to deliver progress to our people. The people of India remember the strong foundations of our cooperation. The food production increases of the Green Revolution and the Indian Institutes of Technology are among the many products of our collaboration.

Today our partnership is robust, reliable and enduring, and it is expanding. Our relationship involves more bilateral collaboration than ever before — not just at the federal level but also at the state and local levels, between our two militaries, private sectors and civil society. Indeed, so much has happened that, in 2000, then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee could declare that we are natural allies.


After many years of growing cooperation since, on any given day, our students work together on research projects, our scientists develop cutting-edge technology and senior officials consult closely on global issues. Our militaries conduct joint exercises in air, on land and at sea, and our space programs engage in unprecedented areas of cooperation, leading us from Earth to Mars. And in this partnership, the Indian American community has been a vibrant, living bridge between us. Its success has been the truest reflection of the vitality of our people, the value of America’s open society and the strength of what we can do when we join together.

Still, the true potential of our relationship has yet to be fully realized. The advent of a new government in India is a natural opportunity to broaden and deepen our relationship. With a reinvigorated level of ambition and greater confidence, we can go beyond modest and conventional goals. It is time to set a new agenda, one that realizes concrete benefits for our citizens.

This will be an agenda that enables us to find mutually rewarding ways to expand our collaboration in trade, investment and technology that harmonize with India’s ambitious development agenda, while sustaining the United States as the global engine of growth. When we meet today in Washington, we will discuss ways in which we can boost manufacturing and expand affordable renewable energy, while sustainably securing the future of our common environment.

We will discuss ways in which our businesses, scientists and governments can partner as India works to improve the quality, reliability and availability of basic services, especially for the poorest of citizens. In this, the United States stands ready to assist. An immediate area of concrete support is the “Clean India” campaign, where we will leverage private and civil society innovation, expertise and technology to improve sanitation and hygiene throughout India.

While our shared efforts will benefit our own people, our partnership aspires to be larger than merely the sum of its parts. As nations, as people, we aspire to a better future for all; one in which our strategic partnership also produces benefits for the world at large. While India benefits from the growth generated by U.S. investment and technical partnerships, the United States benefits from a stronger, more prosperous India. In turn, the region and the world benefit from the greater stability and security that our friendship creates. We remain committed to the larger effort to integrate South Asia and connect it with markets and people in Central and Southeast Asia.

As global partners, we are committed to enhancing our homeland security by sharing intelligence, through counterterrorism and law-enforcement cooperation, while we jointly work to maintain freedom of navigation and lawful commerce across the seas. Our health collaboration will help us tackle the toughest of challenges, whether combating the spread of Ebola, researching cancer cures or conquering diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and dengue. And we intend to expand our recent tradition of working together to empower women, build capacity and improve food security in Afghanistan and Africa.

The exploration of space will continue to fire our imaginations and challenge us to raise our ambitions. That we both have satellites orbiting Mars tells its own story. The promise of a better tomorrow is not solely for Indians and Americans: It also beckons us to move forward together for a better world. This is the central premise of our defining partnership for the 21st century. Forward together we go — chalein saath saath.


A renewed U.S.-India partnership for the 21st century - The Washington Post
 
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'Chalein Saath Saath': Modi, Obama write first joint editorial

WASHINGTON: They couldn't really break bread together, but they bonded over political banter and, unlikely as it seems, geek talk. US President Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met for the first time ever on Monday evening, but so much preparation had gone into the diplomatic date that a US-India dalliance at the end of it was a foregone conclusion. After nearly two hours of informal talks, the two sides issued an expansive vision statement chirpily titled ''Chalein Saath Saath'' (Forward Together We Go), and in a surprise move, the leaders of the two largest democracies in the world essayed a joint op-ed that will appear later on Tuesday in a prominent newspaper.

The op-ed is expected to echo the "Vision Statement," which did not exactly announce a formal US-India alliance, but is certainly redolent of a transcendental partnership aimed at elevating the bilateral relationship to an even higher plane than it enjoys now. At its core, the statement indicates a deep and abiding security partnership.

READ ALSO: Kem Cho Mr PM? Obama asks Modi; Michelle Obama not present at dinner

"Our strategic partnership is a joint endeavor for prosperity and peace. Through intense consultations, joint exercises, and shared technology, our security cooperation will make the region and the world safe and secure. Together, we will combat terrorist threats and keep our homelands and citizens safe from attacks, while we respond expeditiously to humanitarian disasters and crises," it said.

The statement also suggested upcoming agreements, overt or covert, while talking about the two sides supporting an open and inclusive rules-based global order, in which India assumes greater multilateral responsibility, including in a reformed United Nations Security Council. "At the United Nations and beyond, our close coordination will lead to a more secure and just world," it said in what would constitute a massive reversal of past form in which the two countries have voted against or been pitted against each other more than 90 per cent of the time.

Deals on climate change and energy were also hinted at. "Climate change threatens both our countries, and we will join together to mitigate its impact and adapt to our changing environment. We will address the consequences of unchecked pollution through cooperation by our governments, science and academic communities. We will partner to ensure that both countries have affordable, clean, reliable, and diverse sources of energy, including through our efforts to bring American-origin nuclear power technologies to India," the statement, perhaps reflecting vision more than immediate intent, said.

23e910f2fcd27b75afce4bc03e0f29e2._.jpg

Obama and Modi at the White House (PTI Photo)

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Such an expansive vision was hardly on the day's menu that began with the "private dinner" going off-script. President Obama greeted Modi by inquiring "Kem Cho, Mr Prime Minister?" (in Gujarati, How are you?) as he received him, to which Modi responded in English. By then it had been agreed that Michelle Obama, who was out campaigning in Milwaukee would not join the party, allowing the dinner to become quasi-official, with nine officials on each side joining the leaders. For form's sake, Modi encouraged his hosts and aides to not be embarrassed to eat their dinner while he sipped warm water on account of his Navratri fast.

As their senior aides and officials knocked back a meal of crisped halibut and saffron basmati rice accompanied by a California wine, Obama and Modi exchanged notes about their political career, according to an official who briefed the media about the meeting. They spoke of their respective election campaigns, of coming to their respective capitals as outsiders, and the problems they encountered in the lack of technological savvy around them, before gravitating to more serious topics such as Ebola, Afghanistan and other serious bilateral stuff that both sides want to work together on.

eee0037ed93420b5815c06daa872dd81._.jpg

Obama and Modi engage in talks at the White House (PTI Photo)

"It was a free-flowing discussion. There was a feeling on both sides of the need to focus on some big things to achieve in a finite period over next few years," MEA spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said of the meeting in the White House Blue Room.

'Chalein Saath Saath': Modi, Obama write first joint editorial - The Times of India
 
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One question: Has this ever happened anywhere in the world where two leaders of governments have penned an editorial in a newspaper?
 
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One question: Has this ever happened anywhere in the world where two leaders of governments have penned an editorial in a newspaper?

Sounds like one of those innovative things Modi would think of. I could be wrong.
 
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Indians expecting China containment. Instead Indians got "improving sanitation and hygiene."

LOL what humiliation! USA mocked your defecation in strong man Modi's face.

:lol::lol::lol:
 
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