Joe Biden and his new team have their hands full, at least for the next few months, with repairs to the damage done by the previous administration. The areas that need immediate attention are immigration, coronavirus, economy and racial justice. Biden has already taken a few important decisions on the very first day in office – rejoining the Paris climate change accord and supporting WHO.
Biden has also signed the executive order reversing Trump’s mandate on wearing masks and maintaining social distance. He believes this will definitely accelerate faster recovery from the pandemic.
On immigration one hopes Biden’s administration will take positive steps to increase H-1B visas and also help solve prevailing border issues with Mexico.
Kamala Harris has become the first woman, first black American and first person of Indian descent, to hold the nation’s second highest office. Hopefully she will bring a better understanding to Indo-US relationships. The new administration has more than 20 Indian-American official appointees in Biden’s cabinet. Indian-Americans have come a long way since Dalip Singh Saund, the very first Indian-American and first Asian elected to the US Congress. Reelected twice he represented California’s 29th District, years 1957 – 1963.
Modi had very successfully developed a close association with the Trump administration, and hopefully he will continue to maintain the same. With regards China Trump had undoubtedly supported India and Biden must continue to further widen the support base for the long haul, in key areas of defense, medicine, IT and renewable energy. America must realize that India is the only alternate to counter aggressive China, be it in the Pacific or, Indian Oceans. Future wars will be economic in nature and US needs to strengthen its prowess by building strong relationships with India and other Asian countries.
India is expected to become a $5-trillion economy by 2025, and it will need support of US and rest of the world. Surely China doesn’t want to see this happen. For this reason they want to keep India busy at their borders by creating distracting incursions. China is doing the same in the South China Sea with Taiwan and other developing South East Asian nations. Creation of the QUAD has happened at the right time to counter such moves and US must keep a close watch. The world has already lost more than 2-Million human lives and trillions economically, due to China’s negligence on Wuhan Virus.
While in India, Modi’s administration struggles to find solutions to convince agitating farmers on new farm policies apparently the farmers are in no mood to accept the offers. Hopefully, the impasse will make way and find a solution soon. Even though Modi’s intentions are with progress for farmers and India’s growth but it is never easy to make major changes anywhere, especially in a country like India. The Indian administration’s recent offer to withhold the new farm laws for 18-months is a good move and farmers will now have enough time to investigate the true benefits of the proposed changes.
