Indian foreign policy is hostage to desperation for closer ties with the US

Ghazala Wahab 

US President Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s perfunctory bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Tianjin during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit has led many in India to speculate that Trump may have unknowingly triggered a reset in India-China relations. These are expectations higher than what the Indian leadership can deliver, which particularly at this point in history, is exceptionally inept and desperate—to repair relations with the US.

While Indian leadership’s inability to recognise and accept the reality that the world has undergone a transformation, spearheaded by China, in the last decade is only one reason why we will not choose to improve relations with Beijing at the cost of our ties with America. There are two more fundamental factors, the first of which is not specific to the Modi government.

For Indian people, the US is the land of dreams. According to the 2023 statistics from the US embassy in New Delhi, the Mission processed a ‘record-breaking’ 1.4 million visas that year. Of these, over 7,00,000 were visitor visas, 1,40,000 were student visas, and 3,80,000 were employment visas. By 2024, the number of student visas being issued to Indians had crossed the figure of 3,31,000, making India the top source of international students in the country.

Some more statistics. The largest Indian Diaspora lives in the US—a population of over 5.4 million people, marginally behind the Chinese (about 5.5 million), comprising 1.5 per cent of that country’s population. This population has grown by a phenomenal 174 per cent between 2000 to 2023, when the information technology (IT) boom happened. But that is not all. This population group punches well above its weight, primarily because of its felicity with the English language and capacity for hard work. This is the reason that from politics and academics to big corporations (IT, investment banking etc.,) and performing arts, Indians have created a space for themselves in the US mainstream. What’s more, in many spheres, especially in politics and IT, many are in the leadership positions, creating a cycle of aspiration and achievement.