By Lakshmana Venkat Kuchi
While the situation seemed to have thawed between the two countries and trade talks are set to resume, it may not lead to a Trump-Modi meeting, especially given the repeated proclamations by the US President of stopping the India-Pakistan conflict when India launched Operation Sindoor.
The latest assertion by Trump came during his address to the United Nations General Assembly, which the Prime Minister skilled and deployed External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar instead. President Trump also hit out against India and China for funding the Ukraine war in his UNGA address.
Other than cold numbers and geopolitical and economic ground realities and compulsions, the perception battle and image trappings of President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi could also come in the way of a proposed meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of ASEAN meet slated for October end.
Officials of India and US have met in New York, where External Affairs Minister Jaishankar called on US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Word filtering out of Washington is that officials were exploring the possibility of a Trump-Modi meet, if possible, a bilateral one, or a meet on the sidelines of ASEAN meet in Malaysia in October end.
Since Prime Minister Modi is expected to attend the ASEAN meet in Malaysia, and so also President Trump could, there are speculations if all was well by that time, the event may also see a Modi-Trump meet.
It may be recalled that after Trump imposed penal tariffs on Indian exports to “punish” for purchasing Russian Oil, and now the most recent Visa fee hike, Prime Minister Modi skipped the UNGA meet and deputed external affairs minister S Jaishankar instead.
This was being widely seen by political analysts as Modi’s way of avoiding meeting Trump, amid heightened stress on account of tariffs and most recent issue of US Visa Fee hike, a move that affects people of Indian origin and also impacts India’s IT sector.
While Trump and his team explain the move as essential to give jobs to local Americans by reducing dependence on immigrants, including even from India who work on H1B Visas issued for workers who are appropriately skilled. Now, President Trump has hiked the Visa fee to $ 100,000 per every new Visa application under H1B scheme, and the fees is to be paid by firms that hire such workers. Now this would make hiring immigrants highly and prohibitively expensive. And thus would release jobs for local Americans.
This sure helps Trump to be seen as fighting for locals and adds to his poll slogan theme of Make America Great Again. But experts in USA question the veracity of this perception as it is the absence of appropriate skills that US had to invite immigrants in, in the first place. In the case of Modi, by seeing as a leader standing up to Trump, as his decision to give the UNGA a miss his time around and also ignoring a couple of phone calls from Washington, the Prime Minister gains in terms of a stronger image of self as a tough leader.
Given this, there are analysts who wonder if it would be a good idea for Modi to meet President Trump, who seems to have finding ways and means to hurt India and Indian interests. But of course, in diplomacy the key is to keep negotiations going on and diplomatic niceties maintained whatever the domestic or personal likes and dislikes may be.
But, cautions strategic analyst and foreign affairs specialist, Atul Aneja, “meetings at the highest level, and in this case between Modi and Trump, have to be carefully prepared for and have to be very tangibly result-oriented. If it is going to be Trump lecturing us in the meeting, then there is no point. But if Trump does something visible, that is announcing that America would withdraw 25 percent tariffs for India’s purchases of Russian oil it could be a good starting point for a dialogue.”
World leaders are by now aware of Trump and his tactics and have become careful.
“I think one has to be careful with trump, the way he sometimes brings cameras to meetings and makes them public, like he did with Zelensky, one has to keep all that in the background. A sort of climbdown from the US publicly should be the only basis for Modi to meet Trump,” Aneja said.
Washington and Delhi are working on a trade deal that was stalled after US tariffs, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “India is a relationship of critical importance to the US. He met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in New York, when the latter had come to attend the UNGA.
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor sounded hopeful about Indo-US relations. “There are lots of uncertainties around, but there’s still a possibility that the Indo-US relationship could recover very substantially during the remaining three years and four months of the Trump presidency,” Shashi Tharoor said in a post on social media platform X. In another post, he questioned the silence of the NRIs in America and lamented their refusal to lobby on behalf of India, even on issues that affect them and the country.
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