WASHINGTON, Mar 8: India, of late, is showing a lot of ambition and spirit of entrepreneurship particularly on trade arrangements, a former American diplomat and now head of US India Business Council has told lawmakers.
“If you look at their negotiations with the UK, with the United Arab Emirates, with Australia, with Israel, it’s really interesting how they’re prioritizing relations with those countries,” Atul Keshap told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing Congressional hearing last week.
When he was in India last year as Chargé d’affaires, Keshap said, he certainly heard a degree of ambition, and a degree of willingness to explore trade arrangements, that he hadn’t heard in the past.
“That’s encouraging, and we ought to reciprocate, and see where that can go. I’m always ambitious, and we should always try. Look, India makes its own strategic calculations about how it wants to shape its future prosperity, but I think the US should always play a part in that,” he said.
“Ours is the most dynamic and largest economy on Earth, and I do think our two great democracies can do more to bring our economies closer together, and it will be certainly for the benefit of our citizens.”
There are four million Indian-Americans in this country, and there’s been enormous growth in the relationship between the United States and India, he added. (PTI)
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