Transcript of Interview with Katherine Hadda of CSIS

Transcript of Interview 

Speaker 1: Kerav Agarwal, Founder of 2Republics 

Speaker 2: Katherine Hadda, Visiting Fellow CSIS, Chair on India and Emerging Asia Economics

Speaker 1: The first question I have is: How can India and the United States deepen their collaboration in general, and what do you think is the most important area of cooperation for both countries? 

Speaker 2: Well, that's a really good question.Let me just break it apart a little bit, and I'm going to flip it around. I think what we're seeing is that we have a very broad range of cooperation now between our countries, which is very good. We tend to see a lot more (cooperation) on the security side, and we tend to see disagreements on the economic side. But the truth is our trade and investment relationship has grown. It's lagged, but it's still growing. We can and we are cooperating more, globally, at least right now, in organizations like the G20 when India hosted in 2023. You saw a lot of cooperation between our countries. So I think the big challenge, frankly, is not to let China define our relationship. We have an easy time, in a way, agreeing about the risk that China presents. Maybe not precisely. It hasn't really been tested.   If China attacks Taiwan, how will both countries respond? It's gonna be different possibly because our realities are different. We don't have a long border with China, for example. And so our attitudes towards things are different. India has a strategic autonomy and its foreign affairs that we respect. But we do agree China is a risk in the region. And so that makes it easy to have things like the Quad, where we cooperate and do joint military exercises with Australia and Japan. So all that's very good. 

We lack that strategic framework for economics, for example. And that is a problem. We're not going to do a free trade agreement with India anytime soon in this country. That would be a framework.To some extent, China also has given us an economic framework because we wanna counter supply chains, for example, make our supply chains more resilient. I call those defense adjacent relationships. Right? So we have to really take a step back and see what our long term partnership should look like other than China if we want it to be long lasting and resilient.

 Speaker 1: You touched on the point of economics. And how can both the nation's balance their own trade priorities while ensuring their own mutual economic growth? Because as you said, they've had their own independent thinking and you can't have China define that. So how can they balance their priorities while also ensuring that they also have their own economic growth? 

 Speaker 2: I think it's going to be difficult, quite frankly, especially in the next few years because we both have the make in India, making US orientation, and we do see the world differently. I think our country, for all its squabbles, for all the talk of tariff increases, we do have the most open market in the world. That's why everyone comes to us. India has a huge market and yet it's relatively closed. And I think to take down the temperature in trade disagreements with the United States, opening up the Indian market to US companies more easily, there's been some progress, but not enough. I think it's gonna be very important. We understand that India is afraid to just open its market because of China. The Chinese could walk right in, but I I think there must be creative ways to get around that. But it's gonna be difficult given the lack of desire for a trade agreement, especially in this country.

 Speaker 1: Thank you. How can India and the United States deepen their collaboration in emerging technologies like AI, clean energy, and some of those new technologies that are rising that are very important that will determine the future as we see it? 

 Speaker 2: That's a really good question too. You're asking good questions.  We are doing a lot with India on things like iCET (Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology) and other areas. Our businesses cooperate in IT already quite a bit. I think I mentioned to you that Microsoft, for example, has its largest campus anywhere in the world outside the United States in India. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, is from Hyderabad. And so there's a lot of cooperation. I remember when I first visited Microsoft and Hyderabad seeing how they design and code software using their different offices. Sometimes people are in (the same) place, but a lot of it's IT. So a lot of times they have something, what I used to call an intellectual supply chain. We saw it also in, for example, medical devices or pharmaceuticals. There was one company that had a lab in West Virginia and a lab in Hyderabad, and they turned out the lights in Hyderabad and opened the lab in West Virginia. So, I think there's a lot of cooperation in the private sector that's really going to drive the direction. Governments can only do so much. But here again, I do think India can do more to open up its markets to investment, keeping in mind that India's social disruptions from AI may be quite significant, as may ours be, but maybe India even more. And so, again, it's just a matter of sorting out priorities. 

 Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest hot topics in the news is that many students face challenges like visa restrictions and a lot of immigration problems between both the countries. What work can be done between India and the United States that can create more opportunities for young people and entrepreneurs or anyone who's willing to establish a footing in both the countries? 

 Speaker 2: Well, in terms of just student visas, it can't be that hard to get to the United States because there are 330,000 Indian students in the United States right now. It's exceeded China now. I did read an article that the (Indian student) applications had gone down, which is concerning. Maybe we should look because it's a win-win for everyone. Are you talking about H1Bs? Like, what happens after someone graduates that that's a restriction?  

 Speaker 1: Right. Like, what happens after that and citizenship? Yeah

 Speaker 2: Okay. Well, first, let's get back to Americans studying in India. Do you know how many American students there are in India? Again, 330,000 Indians in the United States.  

 Speaker 1: I'm not aware of that.

Speaker 2: Okay. Well, I found a statistic for you that between 2022 and 2023, it was 1300.

1300 US students versus 330,000, and,f I were a betting person, I would guess most of the students are NRIs. Because of the people I know who have studied, I had people working for me in Hyderabad who had studied in India. There were at least 2 non NRIs who had done so but most of the time it's NRIs. So I think that I'm putting on the United States. We have to raise awareness among our students about the opportunities that can be gained by studying not just in Florence, but in countries like India. But both countries could probably help drive that process by creating scholarships and opportunities. 

The H1B issue is a completely separate and very complicated issue. And one of the basic problems is that H1B, even though it allows for immigration, is not supposed to be an immigrant program. That's why it's been controversial since it was founded in 1990. There have been all these laws to amend it. It's not just the Trump administration or Biden. It's a tough one because we gain from having these immigrants, by and large. Our companies do, but it's not without controversy.

Speaker 1:  Moving into a separate direction, a lot of the relationships between both the countries is based on culture and a lot of art. So what role do cultural exchanges like film, art, and literature play in shaping the perceptions of India US relations? 

Speaker 2: Well, that's a really interesting question because I've never really thought about it before. There is an area where really our cultural exchanges are more even. So if you look at Bahubali and it was really popular in the United States, maybe among a subset of streaming people who were interested in that kind of movie. But Bollywood is a known brand in the United States. Maybe Tollywood is less so. But when you think about an Oscar award winning song from a Telugu movie, I think we're in kind of a new territory of people being more interested in (Indian) culture. I can tell you that cultural exchange is not just in India I saw this all around the world, and it is tremendously important. They bring people together. We had jazz musicians visiting from the United States, not only when I was in India, but in New Zealand.., it really builds a lot of understanding and goodwill. And there is also a case where sometimes governments can help because if you leave things to commercial products, people get a view of the United States based on crime shows about Baltimore or movies or something like that. But sometimes, real commercial exchanges involve bringing writers or artists, for longer term visits. Another thing we do that's very important is we have a Fulbright program that sends English teachers to a lot of countries, including India. In addition to teaching English, they really do teach culture and build understanding. So I'm a big believer in these things. I am a former diplomat, but they're really important. 

 Speaker 1: Thank you so much. With India being a rising global superpower as we saw with the recent G20 summit, just a year and a half ago, how can both India and the United States being major superpowers in their region cooperate to try and fix other areas of the world, such as maybe the issue in Afghanistan or the Middle East or South China Sea? How can both countries be on the same page when it comes to these issues?

 Speaker 2: We won't always be on the same page when it comes to these issues. But the fact is, we agree on an awful lot. So when India was the head of the security on the Security Council, was actually the chair of the Security Council, I think also about a year and a half or 2 years ago, they did a really good job in shepherding through some controversial things. We do cooperate in groups like the G20. 

You haven't asked me yet about the Trump administration. The Trump administration tends to sort of shun larger international organizations in favor of regional, more transactional groupings. So it was the Trump administration that really elevated the Quad, revived it, I would say, which had been formed during the tsunami, many years ago, but had gone sort of dormant. So that's definitely I think we'll see more regional things like that. But again, even on regional issues, we're not gonna agree all the time. We're not members of the BRICS. And I think India’s agreeing to admit Iran, for example, into the BRICS, the Biden administration was remarkably soft spoken about that. I don't think they ever really said anything because the BRICS isn't seen as very impactful. But I have a feeling the Trump administration may say more about it. 

Speaker 1: Speaking on that point, with India's involvement in BRICS and India's close ties to Russia and US positions on the Ukraine war, How can both of the countries navigate their differences? Because I feel that that's one of the biggest issues that could potentially lead to some sort of disruption. 

Speaker 2: That's interesting. I might agree with you, but I can see some others. I think the good news is, in the past, it was possible for a single disagreement to derail the relationship.  I mentioned to you yesterday the Khobragade case, the case of an Indian diplomat who was arrested in the United States that just put a freeze on the whole relationship. I think we're in a stage now where, yes, we did disagree with India about Russia and Ukraine. But, we also called out prime minister Modi (positively) when he spoke out against what Putin had said about Ukraine. We we try to find areas of agreement even in our areas of disagreement. 

But this is why bringing it back to your first question, cooperating across a really wide range of issues is important because it makes it possible to focus on the positive things and keep progress going even when we're disagreeing on very significant things, such as charging an Indian with a possible assassination plot against an American citizen in New York. That's been channeled into a criminal channel rather than made into a political issue, I think precisely because we wanna create a broad and thriving US-India relationship.

 Speaker 1: Thank you. Finally, what areas of cooperation do you think are necessarily underexplored between both countries and deserve more attention?

Speaker 2: I think I'm going to say education just for the reasons we said, and you're going to be a little surprised at what I have to say. Even among those 330,000 Indian students, how many of them are studying STEM, which we like, we support, apropos our point about Indian parents wanting their kids to study STEM. But the problem is, of those Indian students, how many study the US political system and go back and teach it or work as a journalist? Too few. And we just discussed that there are not enough Americans at all who are studying India. And that isn't just a problem for academics. It's a problem for the government.

It's a problem for businesses. Any American business thinking of expanding into India should have knowledge of India in their boardroom. So we really need to work on this aspect of the relationship more than we have. 

 Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much. That was some very valuable information, and I learned a lot about it.

 Speaker 2: Okay. Great. Thank you.