 Well, thanks everybody for coming out. This is an excellent audience, an excellent crowd. Usually, we have a pretty big drop-off between registration and who shows up. And this time, it seems to be the opposite. So clearly, it's a timely and interesting topic. My name is Rick Rosso. I hold the Wadwani Chair in US India Policy Studies at CSIS, a role that I've held since February. And as we like to joke in the think tank community, at least since the time I came on board, the agenda for the things that we've been able to work on is pretty much written itself. A big election in India, a budget release, now the Prime Minister's trip. So bear with me six months from now as we have to start making stuff up. But for now, these kind of things are just pretty obvious, what we all have to be working on and focusing on. Got a great group in the audience here, representing, of course, the policy community, foreign embassies, the US government, companies. So the interest is even more widespread than we've seen for some of the other events that we've done so far, especially because I think we all recognize that getting relations right between the United States and India, it's a big deal. And it's went well sometimes, not as well other times. And I think we really saw a high point starting just about 10 years back, I think, exhibited most poignantly through the civilian nuclear agreement. And everybody always holds these kind of trips up to that standard, what's the next nuclear deal and when's it going to be signed? Let me just start off by saying, I don't predict that we're going to have another nuclear deal signed this trip, happily proven wrong if it happens otherwise. The nuclear deal was the high point, but it also really was the trigger for the deterioration relations and kind of overlooked, I think, a lot of times. But what happened when India's parliament was unable to pass a civilian liability law that would allow for nuclear cooperation, then I think kind of at the strategic interest, there was a question raised about whether or not India could be that kind of a partner. Trading and economic relations throughout though remain quite strong, but in the last couple of years because of policy decisions and changes in India related to cross-border taxation, related to local manufacturing, related to financial property protection, and the lack of movement on new reforms, I think the policy community in Washington too was questioning whether or not as an economic partner there was real opportunity and greater scope there. So we got an exciting series of events that took place with the Modi, the BJP's victory in the Lok Sabha elections in April-May, the first time that the BJP has ever won a majority government on its own, the first time any government has had a majority in India in 30 years, and so the opportunity is for some new reform and change. There's also obvious alignment I think with what Modi has talked about pre-election and post-election with what the United States can offer as a partner, but there's also questions. We didn't have such good relations with Modi over the last 10 years for a variety of reasons, but particularly because of the visa withdrawal, and we didn't maintain strong relations I think, also with the BJP, so peeling our way out when this relationship post-election, it's been an exercise, but there's been a full-court press from the United States. Several cabinet secretaries visiting there, at least one cabinet secretary from India come this way and several other meetings below the cabinet level, so the full-court press, as we say in the United States, has certainly been on, but as we look at the visit and we talk about the relationship, part of it presumes that it's actually gonna be a government-to-government relationship, and in fact what Modi may be looking for may not just be relations with the U.S. government, but relations with the private sector, relations with the diaspora, so in organizing this event we thought there's a million topics we could cover, we've done great work on education, we've done great work on social issues, we've done great work on a variety of fronts, but if you were to boil down the relationship into the three areas where you've got the most opportunity for an upside, economic-commercial relations, defense and security relations, and how the Indian-American community can tie us together, we thought would be three that perhaps would be the most important. We didn't wanna blow this into a 17-day conference in preparation for a shorter visit than that. So we've got three excellent guests up on stage today to talk about the relationship in these three angles, partially about the visit, but also, not just the visit itself, you know, this is not just gonna be about deliverables for the visit, which is what everybody's focusing on, but how this visit may actually trigger a better relationship going forward. So immediately to my right is Ambassador Susan Esmerman. She's a partner and chairs the International Program at the Steptoe and Johnson. She's also a board and executive committee member at the U.S. India Business Council, my former employer, I know this seems a little bit weird as a former U.S. IBCer having one staffer and one board member, but it just so happens that the experts seem to gravitate in that direction. So prior Ambassador Esmerman had served in a variety of roles in the U.S. government, particularly in Clinton administration, most recently as the deputy U.S. trade representative, and her relationship with India goes back quite some time. When I first started working on India issues, I had a lot more hair and a lot less knowledge about India, and as Michael Clark and I were trying to figure out what the U.S. government was doing, there was one person at a senior level that always returned that phone call and agreed to come to a meeting, chair something, speak on something, and it was Ambassador Esmerman. So one of the great friends and privileged to have her on stage today. Suresh Anoy, very familiar to everybody in this room, I'm sure. An executive vice president, information management consultings incorporated here in Northern Virginia, consulting and technology services company. But well beyond his role at IMC, he's been a real leader and proponent of bilateral relationship, and for him it's not just coming around when there's a Modi trip. The smaller meetings that others would say are a little bit less important, but that really become the building blocks of relationship. Suresh has always been there to support his intelligence, his wisdom, his wit, and everything else at his disposal. So thanks for your work Suresh, I'm glad to have you here. Thank you. And Rahul Madhavan, Rahul is the director for Aerospace and Defense at the U.S. India Business Council. I'm sure all of you know or hopefully you do that it represents 300 of the largest companies doing trade and investment between the United States and India. And for him, you know, for some folks at the U.S. IBC, you know, it's a way to get engaged, but for Rahul, he is the engagement. He's at the forefront of everything that's happening on defense and security relations. And so I'm sure, well, I'll be illuminated by his remarks as well. So we'll sort off with Sue, please. Great, thank you. Good morning everybody. Rick. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me here. Rahul and Suresh, it's a pleasure to be here with you. Well, Rick, it is true that I believe then and I continue to believe now in the enormous potential of the U.S.-India economic relationship, but we have not come close to realizing its potential. With the arrival of Prime Minister Modi, there is hope and heightened expectation to change that dynamic. As many in this audience are aware, the last few years have been especially challenging for our bilateral economic relationship with backsliding in India on a broad range of economic trade policies from tax to IP affecting many sectors and companies, both Indian and American. The unpredictability, the uncertainty, a lack of transparency of government action added to the very difficult business environment, sending negative signals to the investor community and causing some companies to question their commitment to the Indian market. The range and extent of these issues were surprising to many of us as it followed years of successive, gradual liberalization and unprecedented growth and dynamism in India and compounding this, there have been few effective government channels for addressing these problems or for a broader and more systemic bilateral economic engagement. For example, the Trade Policy Forum, chaired by the Commerce Ministry and USDR has not met since 2010, but even prior to that, when it did meet, there was no meaningful or sustained dialogue, trust, follow-through or problem-solving capacity. It's hard to have a broader trade relationship if there is no ability to prepare the ground and to engage with candor, directness and efficiency. And the bilateral trade and investment figures very much reflect this situation. While many talk about a quadrupling of trade over the last decade, we have to acknowledge that this has been from a small base and is not nearly as robust as it should be. While an imperfect comparison for perspective just consider the total US goods and services trade with China was more than six times greater than with India last year, US goods exports to China five times higher, US services exports to China were triple the amount in India and US ag exports were 30 times that with India. Of all the goods that India imports, less than 5% come from the United States and of all the goods that the United States exports, less than 2% go to India. And I think many of you have heard this comparison but I think it's always important to keep this in mind. Our entire trade with India is less than our trade with Netherlands, a country with a population less than Mumbai. I think the figures speak for themselves. With the election of Prime Minister Modi, we see a new era, a dramatic change in approach with his full-throated embrace of business and foreign direct investment as key to economic growth and his agenda. I think we really need to appreciate how historic this is. This is a departure from past Indian governments that have reflected ambivalence toward business and reluctance to speak out about the value of foreign investment. His focus is on enhancing manufacturing and infrastructure development and attracting foreign investment to create jobs and build skills. This focus is very much reflected in the summit activities. We have never before seen an Indian Prime Minister has visited to the US so heavily business oriented and so packed with meetings with the US business community. So the overall pro-growth and business direction and some early steps, including announcements to increase foreign ownership and defense and insurance have created optimism in the business community about the possibilities that lie ahead. Prime Minister Modi's mantra of red carpet, not red tape for investors and more governance and less government are both welcome and encouraging. There is a sense that the Modi government will be attentive to addressing problems that individual companies confront in India. There would seem to be a real potential for bilateral collaboration and investment, particularly in energy defense and the infrastructure areas and hopefully we will see the foundation for that in this summit. But certainty, consistency and transparency of government policy and sanctity of contract, timely decision-making all will be critical to ultimately draw in and promote successful American investment that this Prime Minister is seeking. It must be said though that India's recent stance blocking the WTO trade facilitation agreement sent conflicting signals. Under mining, the Modi government's a very strong message of change and his early positive step. It was deeply disappointing and a source of concern as this is the first time I have seen India not follow through on a firm WTO commitment it has made. Especially in this case where India played a central role in negotiating the final terms of the very deal that they have declined to implement in ratify and especially where India stood to gain from implementation of the trade facilitation agreement and where the agreement India brokered protected it from current challenges to its food stockpiling program. Ironically, by blocking the agreement India stands to lose on both fronts. And more fundamentally, this raises a question of how India views its role in the international trading system, how it approaches international agreement, how it sees its role in the broader Asia trading environment and how it sees trade liberalization fit with its economic mission. My hope is that the July stance on trade facilitation is not indicative of its ultimate position on these broad questions that it is early days in the Modi administration and that the new government has not yet developed its overall architecture and approach for India's global trade engagement. For I have long thought that India stands to gain from an affirmative leadership role at the WTO commensurate with its complex economy, its export interest, and its importance standing in the world, India already has a range of offensive interests that could and should be pursued through the WTO and I expect that the WTO will become increasingly valuable to India as it expands its manufacturing base and export platform as Prime Minister Modi envisioned. Now returning to the bilateral relationship, reaching the full potential of our relationship and attracting the investment that Prime Minister Modi seeks will ultimately require a more systemic bilateral engagement. To that end, many of us have long advocated for negotiation and conclusion of a bit of bilateral investment treaty. This initiative was endorsed as long ago as 2006 by top leaders in both countries by Prime Minister Singh and President Bush and by both the Indian and American business communities but the work has not moved forward in any meaningful way. The initiative is even more relevant today as it is important and directly related to furthering Prime Minister Modi's goal to attract FDI particularly in infrastructure. It is my hope that work is given priority and the direction that it deserves so that we will move forward with renewed momentum and vigor. Here India and the US have a full mutuality of interest and the bilateral investment treaty would be a building block for a broader and more ambitious relationship between the two countries. As many of you know, the bid sends a strong signal of stability in the investment environment. It provides core protections against arbitrary and discriminatory treatment that would facilitate US investment in big ticket infrastructure projects where US companies have been very reluctant to invest especially due to payment security concerns. It creates ground rules that promote consistency, predictability and transparency in the investment environment. Core issues for our business community as they approach the Indian market. As Rick and I have discussed, it is frustrating that there is not greater appreciation of the value and the direct connection of the bid to our mutual goals and objectives at this juncture in our relationship. More immediately, I just hope that we can secure some simpler early wins that would build confidence in the relationship. One possibility might be the Global Entry Partnership, a mutually beneficial initiative that the US has offered to only a handful of countries and one that the two countries had previously agreed to explore. It is at the same time practical and symbolic and it would dramatically improve entry and arrival process and it would make business and travel easier and more secure. I'm delighted to see that also as an immediate step that the trade policy forum is being reinvigorated and acting deputy USTR is in India at this point and it was encouraging to read that a meeting will be set shortly. But for that to have any meaning, it would require good faith, sustained and open engagement. Now looking ahead down the road, it is important to give careful consideration to the direction and ambitions of our overall bilateral trade relationship. Without a broader strategic engagement on trade, we risk facing disincentives and barriers impeding long-term bilateral trade and investment. The US is deeply engaged in trans-Pacific and transatlantic regional trade agreements in which India is not participating and India itself is negotiating and is a party to a network of agreements with very different standards to which the US is not a party. To give you a sense of the potential significance of this, consider that a major thrust of the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations is to address behind the border barriers, IP investment and standards to promote favorable conditions for the location of global value chains in countries participating in the agreement. This will of course put India in a disadvantage when competing for such investment and India for its part has agreements offering preferences to member countries not extended to the US. The US and India must think creatively and broadly so that we can structure our relationship to build on our complementary strengths and prevent the diversion that could arise from these different trading blocks. And how this is ultimately addressed, of course depends on how India seeks to position itself and engage in the broader Asian trade. So let me end by saying that I believe that our two countries share common objectives for the visit, that there be an enthusiastic reception for the prime minister from our government and business community and the Indian American community that this visit built trust between the two countries and a basis for a more productive engagement commensurate with our potential and that there is tangible evidence to our peoples of the concrete benefits that the US, India, business and economic collaboration can bring to both countries. Thank you. Great, thanks. Thank you. Suresh, I don't know if you want to be there. Can I just stay? Yep, yep. Thank you, Susan, for your remarks. Excellent. And thanks for the kind introduction, Rick. Nice to be on the panel with you, Raul. Good morning. When Rick called me and said he wanted me to speak for the diaspora and talk about some of the issues and opportunities and challenges that we face, I got thinking about when I first came into this country in 1973 and I had to explain to the phone operator where India was on the map. And I think in the last 40 years or so, the Indian immigrants in this country have certainly come a long way. But in trying to think about the diaspora itself, I started to realize that it's not just about the recent wave of Indian immigrants, but the diaspora is actually represented by at least five or six different categories of folks in this country. And they all have significantly, or in some cases, different views, radically different views of how they interact with India. So going back, the earliest Indian immigrants in this country were actually in the 1580 or 1620, is what I understand. But anyway, there are these early, pre-India's independence movement. There were Indians who came here in the 1920s and 30s and clearly have been here for several generations. And then there are what I would call the secondary immigrants, people who came from Guyana, Barbados, Trinidad, and then post World War II, there's a third set of immigrants who came from Central Africa, propaganda, Kenya, and other places, moved to England and London, then came here, and most of them came here with capital so they could actually buy hotels and businesses and get into the trading space. The more recent immigrants, those who came here post-1965, after Lyndon Johnson sort of pushed and got the Heart Cellar Act and took the quotas out and allowed more Indians to come in, there was a very selective process by which Indians came here and most of them were highly educated, went to engineering schools such as the IITs, medical schools, and so on and so forth. That part of the immigrant population has been extremely successful and those are probably the ones that you mostly read about. And then finally, there is the fifth, I think category of the diaspora, which is very well represented also, are those from the Gulf countries. People who continue to maintain their Indian citizenship but have built a fairly strong financial base working out of Gulf countries, but primarily in the middle in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and they also have been fairly effective, if you will, in exercising their economic might by investing in businesses and so on and so forth. According to the 2010 census, the Indian population now in the United States is close to 3.1 million people. That is amazing and it is the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States with a growth rate of 130%, which is 10 times the normal in the US growth rate. So that is quite an impressive number and they're the fourth largest after Mexico, the Filipinos and the Chinese. But the Indians have been extremely visible both in politics and almost in every walk of life. Just to give you a few examples that I noted, Nikki Haley, who's the governor of South Carolina, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, New York's Attorney General, Creed Marara, Indian Chawla, who's the astronaut, the first female Indian astronaut, Miss USA, who just finished her term, Nina Devalluri, the president of Microsoft, Satya Nadella. And interestingly enough, over the last, I would say, eight years or so, there's been a strong buildup of an India caucus both in Congress and in the Senate. Every spelling bee champion in the United States. Every spelling bee champion in the United States. So it's very impressive how the Indian community has done in the United States. The per capita income amongst the Indian community here is the highest at $88,500 per household and compare that to the national average, which is 50,000. So the 71% of all Indians in America have at least a bachelor's degree if not more, compared to that to a 28% national average. Indian entrepreneurs have also excelled in various fields. In Silicon Valley, for example, Indian entrepreneurs have started from 1995 through 2005, have started more companies, more new companies than immigrants from the UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined and in the back of the envelope kind of a calculation that we put together. When I say we belong to a group of alumni from the Indian Institute of Technology, we figured that Indians had created more than 200,000 jobs in the United States and over $80 billion of new wealth that is companies that had done their IPO and created intellectual property. So that's very impressive for a relatively young diaspora in this country. 7% of all high-tech companies in Silicon Valley are run by Indians, including, of course, as I said, Microsoft. Now, having given that kind of a background, in this age of Twitter and YouTube and Google, it is inevitable that this small group of individuals, relatively speaking, do build a lot of political clout if you will, both here and in India. I was just reminded a little earlier that even Prime Minister Modi's elections got a lot of both financial and manpower support from various groups within the Indian community in the United States. Now, having said all that, there are both opportunities and challenges that we face as a group. Post 9-11, there has been a deep misunderstanding within the American community, within a fairly large part of the community, where they are not able to distinguish between the ethnic differences within India. There's this famous case of this woman, Erika Fernandez, I think, who pushed an Indian at a New York subway, Sunindur Sen, and killed him because she couldn't tell if he was Hindu or Muslim as an example. There's the case of the guy who walked into our Wisconsin in Gurdwara and killed 13 people. So those are some challenges that the diaspora has. There is this group of people called Dotbusters in New Jersey and there have been some very high profile killings in that neighborhood there. So there is still a lot of work to be done amongst the Indian diaspora to raise awareness of the Indian contribution to the country, to society. And this is an area where both the Indian government and the US can help to raise awareness, to have more dialogues and so on and so forth between the diaspora and the rest of the community. The other thing is that whereas the first generation of Indians, myself as an example, still have connections and affiliations with people back in India and perhaps even business associations, the second generation and beyond, it's a big question mark. It's kind of interesting that we are now seeing the next generation sort of grow and Raul is a good example of that. Whereas they have a certain amount of affiliation with India, they are more American than Indian, if you will. So there is a tremendous acceptance of Indian cultural events, cultural issues and so forth, but not so much of an appreciation for the economic issues in India. On the US policy side, the loud and often vocal dialogue around immigration can become very divisive and can be construed as being discriminatory in some cases, but there are very good reasons why this dialogue and this debate happens because clearly you cannot have one set of rules for say a segment of the society and another for another segment of the society. And this is also true in India. The problem is that we have an office in India, we have several hundred people working there and it's a challenge working with inconsistent and unpredictable policies that the government has, especially when it comes to remittances, when it comes to transfer pricing, when it comes to the unpredictability of the rupee, for example. So these are issues which I clearly think the Indian government needs to sort of pay attention to in terms of attracting more direct investments by the Indian diaspora as well as others in terms of providing an environment that is business friendly. In terms of opportunities, one of the things that we have seen is that the Indian approach in India to new investments can be very different from the US thinking of investments in the sense that there is a tremendous emphasis being placed on social entrepreneurship. When President Abdul Kalam was here, he challenged a few of us to sort of think about and come up with common solutions to common problems. He said, most of you have adopted America as your home country. Now think about ways in which you can solve common problems. And we had a very interesting dialogue and we came up with six areas that we thought would be of significance to both United States and India which would lend themselves to what we call technology-enabled philanthropy. And this has to do around clean drinking waters to start with. Some of the statistics are mind-boggling. 400 million people in India are going to run out of access to portable water within the next decade or so. Next is healthcare, which is a challenge here in this United States as well as in India. Something like 700 million people who live in villages in India don't have access to proper healthcare. Energy is a big issue. I have some colleagues and friends here in the audience who have focused on that aspect. Again, 300 million people don't have access to affordable energy in India. And alternative energy represents a huge opportunity for both industry and for societies to adopt. Lifestyles, rural lifestyles. Prime Minister Modi in his speech during independence, they talked about sanitation as a big challenge. Recently, we've been working together with Habitat for Humanity as well as with the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin who started a program called SEVA to build toilets in India. And it didn't occur to us that something as basic as toilets that we would take for granted in the United States has direct consequences on women's health. So for example, we were told that women in India, particularly in villages, don't drink water or eat during daytime because they don't have toilet facilities that they can use, sanitation facilities. So as a result, there is a direct implication between healthcare issues and sanitation. And last but not least, implement social entrepreneurial ventures in a sustainable manner. So there are some really interesting challenges that we're in terms of looking at the social impact instead of a return on investment. So one of the things that a small group of alumni from the IITs did was to start building reverse osmosis drinking water plants in villages where for $3,500 they could provide clean drinking water at two rupees per liter, which is pennies per liter for 20,000 people. So that's the kind of thinking that needs to happen between the business community in the United States and in India to have a huge exponential kind of impact on the social demands. In the education space, just to finish it off, there are 26 million children who enter kindergarten each year in India, which is more than the population of Australia and Canada and United Arab Emirates combined. 26 million children coming into kindergarten each year and to meet India's current demand for higher education, for post college, higher secondary education, India needs to build 20,000 universities today to meet the demand. So as a result, we see 84,000 students here in the United States and almost the equal number in Australia and Singapore and other places, which is a huge drain on the dollar reserves that India has. So the challenges are huge, but they also represent enormous opportunities where the diaspora can play a significant role and is currently playing a significant role. And I think as we ponder some of the trade issues and some of the trade relationships, I think it is important to look at it both from the US perspective as well as from the Indian perspective where the social demands are significantly larger than the direct economic demands. So with that, thank you for this opportunity, Rick. Look forward to that dialogue. Great, great. Rahul, one of the areas that, yes sir. One of the areas that seem to maintain a bit of momentum, even if everything else was crashing apart or so it seemed from the outside, but give us an insider's view, defense relationship where we are and where we might go. Yeah, thank you, Rick. First of all, for having me, it's my first time here at CSIS, the new building is gorgeous. And at the same time feel quite at home because of course we have a 10 year veteran of the US India Business Council. We have a board member and IMC is represented on the board as well. So it's pretty tremendous. And speaking of large numbers, which any comparison to India will invite, I'm very pleased to see the size of the crowd here, which I think speaks to the interest that this prime ministerial visit has generated. In the crowd, I do want to recognize a lot of US IPC members as well. And of course my former boss and mentor, Dr. Walter Anderson, if I could just take that liberty of acknowledging him. The US India Business Council, as Rick mentioned earlier, does represent 325 US and Indian companies. We're based here in Washington. We have offices in Delhi, New York and the Bay Area. And I handle our aerospace and defense advocacy work. And that involves working with both Indian and American defense companies. And informing our US government and Indian government stakeholders to the best of our ability of what we can do to increase and enhance bilateral defense trade. The past regime, the past is the past. And I think that what this visit represents is really truly a fresh start across the board. One of the first things I had as written remarks was that defense relations don't occur in a vacuum. Defense relations between two countries occur with a strong underpinning of an economic, a political, a commercial understanding. And certainly, people-to-people ties. Just yesterday, Yudhya Bhat, which is one of the largest joint military exercises, commenced in Nutarakhand between the US and Indian armies. And it's a high-altitude, special operations, counter-terrorism-type activity that wasn't necessarily timed in conjunction with the visit, but I think is symbolic of the fact that we are now re-engaged on some of the more core understandings that we have between our two military infrastructures. Just next door to us is Admiral Rixi, who's the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, and they orchestrate all foreign military sales to India. If I had to look at this audience, all of whom are very well informed already on India, it might be still surprising to you to know that just, let's say, five to 10 years ago, more accurately, eight to 10 years ago, our bilateral defense trade with India, the US and India bilateral defense trade value was close to zero. Then we had the ANTPQ-37 Firefinder radar. Then we started to have the C-17 Globe Masters, heavy-lived aircraft, we started the CC-130s, P-8i, maritime surveillance aircraft, Harpoon Block II, missiles, anti-ship. We started to look at tactical strike weaponry, and now here we are at $14 billion. Now, that's still an incremental step in the broad scheme of US defense exports, but as SIPRI has indicated, India's become the largest importer of defense weaponry. That is not a badge of honor that the Indians wear proudly. We are aware of that. So where we are now, in conjunction with the Prime Minister, your visit that's due to commence at the end of this month, is that the US and India are now emerging on this new path towards the Defense Trade and Technology Initiative, which is co-production, co-development. Some of you are familiar with this, it's DTTI. We are extremely excited about it, because in the past, this bilateral defense relationship has been deemed to be very one-way. And when you talk to American defense companies that have been excited about the India opportunity, not just because of what the engineering skill and capital resources and infrastructure available in India are, and I'll evidence that in just a couple of minutes, but because of the market opportunity as well. And not to be crass, but let's be honest, the South Asia region is one of the most volatile that we're seeing, and the rising ISIS threat that we're looking at has definitely, definitely cross-border implications in the already volatile South Asia region. And as Al-Qaeda announces that they're gonna establish a wing in India, we're looking at a very severe threat perspective over the course of the immediate future. So the U.S. and India, when we talk about a shared partnership, when we talk about converging security interests, these are real, and by all means the growing regionalism of the threat environment directly impacts India. And the U.S. has an interest in protecting both sea land and maritime security. India's coastal borders, by the way, for those who may not know, 7,500 kilometers long. Just to put some perspective on that, that's one and a half times the length of the United States of America. And that's a lot of border to protect. So there are direct shared interests. I know that this is an on-the-record environment. I know this will invite criticism, but there's also a growing China-Pakistan conundrum that the Indians have to be very concerned about. One looks at Guadir, a deep sea water port being established. One looks at the Kharkhoram Highway Pass that's being constructed that directly links Xinjiang Province in the West with China directly down to a port. And that port went from dual commercial use to also now having military implications. One has to look at the JF-17, which is a medium combat multi-role fighter aircraft that the Chinese and Pakistani Air Forces are developing. All the while, India has a 14-squadron deficit in their Air Force. So when you look at the force modernization projectile that the Indian Army, Air Force, and Navy are very interested in collaborating with strategic partners with, the immense opportunity and scope is very much there. But that is just the market opportunity. The fact is that there's political underpinnings, there's economic underpinnings. And when Ambassador Esherman very well sort of spoke about the core challenges that we faced that manifested themselves in some very real economic implications in the past administration, I do think that we're on our way to some of the fixes now. Defense relationship has been somewhat stalled over the course of the past few years. A lot of that had to do with once again market opportunity. When you don't have enough capital to put down payments down on some of your major acquisitions, there will necessarily be a slowdown. Plus, we were, as those who may be familiar with the defense sector in India, mired in a lot of controversy surrounding corruption scandals. There were probably six notable defense corruption scandals that took place over the past two years alone. It stalled procurements. There was a weak coalition with the UPHU government. Decisions could not be made very easily, especially on high visibility programs like defense, and therefore, they started to have a lot of mandating, mandating CSR, mandating indigenization, mandating the use of local labor, mandating minority stake investment in your joint venture. Well, when the BJP got its mandate, that was the first mandate a lot of us were pretty happy to see, actually, because I think that a strong coalition government and the ability to make those decisions on high visibility procurements, including in the defense sector, does lead to what the predictability, transparency, and clarity work has the key words that my co-panelists used. In the defense sector, one that is necessarily a government-to-government relationship to a large degree, I'd also like to add another missing factor in dimension from the last administration that I do see changing with this one, and that's access. It was very difficult to have a dialogue on how difficult and complex some of these procurements can be. Now, we have not only the Prime Minister, you'll visit pending, and I'm proud to say that the U.S. and U. Business Council is hosting the Prime Minister on his one of his last engagements here. Access represents the ability to have a dialogue. And as Chief Minister, in Goodrop, the necessary infrastructure that was put in place for companies like Ford, Corning, Midwest Vacco to make multi-million dollar investments in that state were made apparent by having this kind of dialogue amongst the stakeholders. So when you hear about in the press the business community being excited about Mr. Narendra Modi being the Prime Minister, there's real implications behind that. And his visit here, I should mention, is not gonna have huge big ticket items associated with it in the defense sector, but that is not a metric for the success of this visit. And I mean that because what it does is the prime industrial level visit initiates a huge bureaucracy movement. And both on the Indian side as well as on the U.S. side. And there is incoming next week of very senior level Ministry of Defense dialogue to specifically hash out some of the details for the Defense Trade Technology Initiative. Just on August 9th, Secretary Hagel was in India meeting the Prime Minister, meeting Defense Minister Jaidli, who as all of you know wears two hats as Defense and Finance Minister. And then that was all right on the heels of Secretary Kerry and Secretary Pritzker. Being in India as well. So this dialogue isn't just something that's gonna have a pinnacle moment when Mr. Prime Minister arrives in Washington on the sidelines of his UN General Assembly visit. This is the beginning of an even greater and broader dialogue that establishes working groups for the Defense Trade Technology Initiative as this very important four letter acronym that mobilizes the DOD, that mobilizes the State Department, that mobilizes the Department of Commerce, alongside their dialogue with the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Commerce, and all the other stakeholders that are involved in defense transactions. So I know a lot of you wanna know what are the defense deals waiting in the pipeline. And of course those are for the most part public. And when the Cabinet Committee on Security meets, we'll see those move forward, whether it's the Apache attack helicopter, the Chinook heavy lift helicopter, but the idea of a deliverable as all of us in this Washington based audience would look at for this Prime Ministerial level visit. I don't see it as being a platform sale. I see it as something more along the lines of this brand new initiative on co-production and co-development. And that really is a departure from the past dynamic that the US and India shared. And something like the javelin anti-tank guided missile would represent that. An extremely attractive co-development co-production opportunity, whereby the Indian Army would be the end user of the same system that the US Army currently uses. And then we would jointly develop the next generation with extended range, et cetera, of this anti-tank guided missile. And to see something like that, as opposed to just the platform sale, that I couldn't think of a better, more visible strategic form of cooperation than both of our armed services using the similar weaponry that was jointly developed together. And I'll just put this out there. The new US presidential helicopter fleet, if the VVIP helicopter bid were to be reset, those S92 helicopters, the cabins are built in Hyderabad. So if the US presidential helicopter cabin were to have been built in Hyderabad, I see a lot of convergence there, not only in the strategic form of our cooperation, but in a very tangible manner. So if there's one thing I could just recap there is that we're not looking for platform direct sales. Of course, US industry is gonna have a huge economic stake and a lot of risk in migrating the manufacturing base to India for certain India-specific platforms. That's understood. But the co-development and co-production represents a new dynamic and shift, whereby the US government, our partners, are much more forward-leaning and progressive in transferring sensitive technology to India. Some of you may in the question and answer session ask, well, what is the Indian's expectation? This is it. They want advanced transfer of technology. They want the Defense Research and Development Organization, an entity that we had blacklisted after Bokran II in 98 with the sanctions after their nuclear test. We would be interlocuting with DRDO about technology transfer. And this is all a brand new environment, literally within the past three to four years. And I see no greater form of evolution in a bilateral relationship than I do in our defense relationship with India. Because like I mentioned at the beginning of these remarks, we were at zero eight to 10 years ago. So I did wanna stress that when the Prime Minister visits and the MOD delegation visits, and then, of course, Minister Jake Lee visits shortly after that, on the sidelines of the World Bank IMF meetings, then there's gonna be the Defense Policy Group, then there's gonna be the Defense Production and Procurement Group, then under Secretary Kendall may be visiting India again. He's the point person on the Defense Trade and Technology Initiative. We're tracking this closely and the engagements are robust. And the outcome of all of this will be, will not be necessarily more direct sales. But it's gonna be looking at avenues of cooperation where we can jointly produce and manufacture and transfer necessary technology to Indian entities and have joint use of those end products. I told you I would talk about the joint venture facility just a little bit. Lockheed Martin is manufacturing alongside Tata, the tail frame and empanage facilities for the C-130J Super Hercules. I can assure you, based on information from the Indian government, US government, Lockheed Martin, Tata, all stakeholders involved, that the quality of those tail frames that emerge out of their Hyderabad facility is the best they have globally. Similarly, what I mentioned earlier with the Sikorsky S92 cabins, the quality is of global standard. So what we look forward to is a very, very strong, robust level of cooperation that the Prime Minister's visit is going to open the door for. You need necessarily a certain level of political impetus to push this forward. This is not a bureaucratic procedure. But in order for the bureaucracies to understand the significance placed on this visit, which I'm sure I'm not gonna assure you they do, I think that this is gonna instigate that. So I'm very optimistic of the Prime Minister's visit. And for those who still don't really, see why I see it as being okay that no big platform sales will be announced, is because this is not the Prime Minister coming to the US just to meet with the President. This is the Prime Minister making a special trip down to Washington, and he will be very warmly received. Let's put any doubt about that aside. And his four-day trip here, whether it's in New York or in Washington, the stakeholders that he will be engaging with are extremely eager to receive him in the delegation. And I'm so happy that we're in this new phase where we can look forward instead of continuing to look through a rear-view mirror. Great, thanks for the hold. Thank you. Okay. I think we all are a little bit surprised because of the freeze-out in senior-level engagement with Mr. Modi. And I know from my interactions with senior BJP, RSS, whomever you wanna talk about, leadership before the election, they thought, well, our interests are aligned, but we're gonna play it a little cool initially after the win, which they were assured of just because of the visa and other things. But I think, to all of our surprise, engagement has come about at a more senior-level and faster than a lot of people had assumed. I wanna leave time for questions from the audience, but I thought I'd prompt each of our speakers with one relatively quick question of peace. Ambassador Arsterman, when we talk about engaging India on trade disputes, you, I saw very closely at US-IBC, had some real successes in doing so, particularly your engagement on quantitative restrictions and bringing that down. What was it about the way that you, the way the government engaged that, that allowed for success that we haven't really seen as other commercial disputes, any kind of advice and expertise you could share? Well, I wanna take off on what Raul said because I think there's a link there. This was in 1999 and 2000. We negotiated five agreements then, including one that lifted quantitative restrictions on 1,400 products to show how close the Indian market was. But I think the key was the signal from the top, the Prime Minister's office, and the secretary-level people that were willing to stick their nose out. They got the message and were, and actually interesting in light of what I said about the WTO, once they made the commitments, they followed through on those commitments. So I think that's a critical thing and why I couldn't agree with you more about what you said about the visit. I don't pay that much attention to the long list of deliverables, as I've told you many times. The question is, what is the move? What is the trust that's built? What are the signals that the government, that the bureaucracy get from the Prime Minister's visit? And the same on our side to drive things forward because often what you see with a lot of these, the long list of things, and then no follow-up. The key is the intensity, the direction, and really setting some concrete future guidepost. So I think that's the thing. I just say one thing that I just remembered this morning. I remember when Prime Minister Vajpayee was coming to the United States in September of 2000. And at that time I actually was trying very hard to get him to make a speech about the value of economic relations to the United States of the Indian US relationship. And for any number of reasons, they were not at all interested in that. And it's why it's really such a thrill to have a Prime Minister come here and really make that a central part of the focus. It is truly a new era. Well actually on follow-up, I'll turn to Rahul because one thing that I saw also very different. So when the Congress government surprised everybody by winning an election in 2004, and you saw the first signals from Finance Minister Shyambram's first speech, the budget speech, and it listed three sectors that he wanted to offer up for individual reforms. It was insurance, which remains on the list. It was civil aviation and telecom. And it took two and three years before the government actually issued the paperwork to open up telecom and civil aviation. Jaitley, July 10th, announces insurance defense and railways. And already defense and railways have been announced. But Rahul, I wonder if you could talk about 49% in defense. With more than that on case-by-case, 49% in defense. Does that move the needle from 26, or if you were to sit down with the Prime Minister, would that remain just as strong of a talking point about lifting the cap further? Yeah, it does move the needle because you can then repatriate a greater share of that profit back to your host country, let's call it. But there's actually an institutional investment route where you can even go greater than the 49%. The idea behind 49% versus 51% ownership minority, majority minority versus majority stake, is in terms of having Indian management in control. It's too early for them to take a radical departure from the 26% minority stake. So what they did was they gave it the highest maximum level of the minority stake any foreign entity could hold. And it's also not a bilateral problem. It's a global issue. So the Italians and the French, the EU context in general, they're pressuring the Indian government as well for majority ownership. Now, that 26 to 49 actually was complemented by an early 100 day kind of move, which was the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, the DIPP, de-licensed close to 60% of the list of what was required for getting a license to manufacture in the defense sector. So certain sectors, such as tanks and armaments, still require a DIPP license to produce. But in order to incentivize domestic manufacturing in India, they made that process significantly easier and Ambassador Esterman, the red carpet in the defense sector for manufacturing in India right now was very much laid out because the DIPP took off a huge substantial portion of what was required otherwise to heavily, heavily licensed products to manufacture. And I'm happy to go offline with any one of you who are interested in that list and send it to you. And Suresh, one thing I'll throw over to you. So you referenced that there was a strong group of Indian Americans that supported the BJP and the rise of Prime Minister Modi. Post-election, does that create divisions politically back here, or do you feel that the community at large is kind of pulling at the same words at the same time because this is a development-oriented administration and of course everybody wants to see that. So would you say that it embraced fully with the Indian American community with the visit and all this, are there divisions still? My personal sense is that there has not been any division in the Indian community on this new government. The Indian diaspora here, in general, wherever you went, heard about corruption. You heard about some of the challenges that the previous government over the last two elections, at least, how things have deteriorated over time. So everyone was ready for a change. And knowing what Prime Minister Modi was able to do when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat and the spectacular economic success of that state and some of the radical approaches that he used to subvert, if you will, traditional government channels to get things done, appears to be the way to make it work nationally in India. So time will tell whether or not the new government can deliver on their promises or whether the bureaucracy will weigh them down. But on the other hand, I think, by and large, the Indian diaspora here has been very supportive of the change and just looking to see how things unfold over time. The recent regional elections have sort of been a setback, I think, for the BJP. But other than that, it'll be interesting to see how they perform on a national scale. Well, let me open up the floor. We've got about 25 minutes here and happy to take questions. I see one right in the aisle here, yeah. We got a, yeah, Raj, we got there. My name is Raj Deer and I've been here for a few decades. And something that is of relevance to this group is, I've done two assignments in India with the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service, the Principal Commercial Officer in Mumbai and Chennai. And prior to that, I was with Bureau of Export Administration at the time, interested in transfer of strategic commodities in the world over, including India, of course. My focus at the time was supercomputers. Anyway, I must say, a lot of water has flown under the bridge and thankfully, in a positive way. I'm impressed with that. And the comments that I've heard this morning, back my view, that we have come long ways, although we have some more distance to go. There's no limit to that. So my compliments to all of you, all the speakers, and Rick, thank you for allowing me to come in here and join this group. And thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye. Thank you. Well, that's the kind of comment we like, so feel free to follow that up. But, yeah, yeah, read it also on the hand. My name is Prabir Ghosh. We are involved in US-India energy initiatives, mostly in sustainable energy, but we are looking at energy as a whole. I know, a few comments that's related to my question is, yes, we'd like to look at India. There's a huge trade opportunity. There are lots of issues that needs to be resolved. But if you look at India and China, I know Susan, you commented about that US exports to India is very low. But if you look at the ratio, the ratio with India, US imports and exports is about 60% and 40% compared to China, where it's almost 90 and 10. 90% of the overall trade value, China imports to US, and the imports we talk about from US to China is about, that ratio is about 10%. So there's a big disparity between the ratio in comparison. But where I want to come back to is the energy field. That's the single biggest investment India is looking at. If you look at infrastructure investment, 40% of the infrastructure investment is devoted towards energy. And if you look at the Bloomberg Finance, New Energy Finance we are talking about, they are talking about India in the next 16 years, the 2030 outlook, the next 16 years will invest in one and a half times of US installations. If you are talking about the US is roughly about 550 gigawatts of installs. India will be installing about 650. So there's almost a four to six trillion dollar opportunity. Even if we can get about 2% of that or 3% of that, we are talking about a billion dollar opportunity in the next 16 years. Can any of you comment on what's going on in the energy side besides nuclear? I know that's a big debate. Beside nuclear, can you comment on that? Well, the big problem we had, when India first began to open in the 90s, it was power plants was one of the first areas that 100% foreign direct investment was allowed. And electricity generation is a state subject. There were about a dozen power projects built across India by different American companies. And Ron's the one that was most visible, but Covanta, CMS, El Paso, Caterpillar, there's a whole bunch of projects that were built. And every single one of them, no matter which state, had problems getting paid afterwards. They had a letter of credit, escrow account, state guarantees, and in some cases, a central government counter guarantee. So, and the fact is that a lot of the same chief ministers that were around then are still around now. So the transitions haven't been total, I think, to change those dynamics. A World Bank report that came out last year looking at the electricity sector across India showed that in fact, a lot of states, the sectors were just as bad as they were a decade before. So the environment makes it pretty difficult, I think, to go in. But Ambassador Asim mentioned the importance of an investment treaty. And this is where I think tools like that, they give additional confidence to investors in big projects. That if something goes wrong, if they don't get paid, they've got some recourse, I think will help quite a bit. The other big story on energy is shale gas. India's not an FTA partner, so they don't give blanket approval for shale gas exports. But there's been a handful of American natural gas export terminals licensed for export on FTA partners, and at least two of those have contracted to export to India. So when those come online in a couple of years too, that should help offset the trade deficit. So those are the couple of areas that they got paid. And there's some real opportunities in the alternative energy field. Yeah, it's just not alternative energy. The other big area we really see because we work closely is the distributed energy, the microgrids. Microgrids, right. These are smart grids. These are huge opportunities where US can definitely get in. A lot of opportunity areas, especially with Suresh talking about social entrepreneurship and addressing all the social issues for about half of that 600 million population is a huge issue. The difficulty is I see politicians consistently talk about adding new generation. The cheapest way to fix India's electricity grid is a really big pair of scissors. Sorry. A really big pair of scissors. If you were to actually walk by and cut off all the people that were keeping electricity and get them to pay their bills, yeah, because the cost for actually slowing transmission distribution losses versus new generation is dramatically lower. But it's the old line, if you owe the bank $100, you're in trouble. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank's in trouble. And it's kind of like that with politicians now. If they ever went through with the scissors and started cutting off the thieves, not just the lines themselves, but not payers' bills, tough to get re-elected in that way. And I've seen a lot of great chief ministers that have tried to do tough electricity reforms and they ended up getting voted out of office not long afterwards, so. But distributed, I think, yeah, there is some great opportunities there. So I think you're right on. Other questions? Yeah, couple right there in a row. My name is Emeril Dalarosa of the private sector. This question is for Rahul. How realistic slash optimistic are you that there will be a military transfer of technology from the U.S. to India? There already has been a number of examples. There already has been, and you don't produce, even if it's a basic cabin facility or a tail frame without that necessary transfer of technology. But with any equipment sale, there's been elements of TOT, as we call it, that have already transpired. And the ones that have in the pipeline, whether it's certain naval gun technology or aircraft launch mechanisms or advanced projectiles, those all accompany transfer of technology packages as well. That's the key demand from the Indian government and that's something that the U.S. industry is ready to accept. And the gentleman next to you. Mark Pace, Washington Times. What is the biggest economic priority for the U.S. of the meeting and the biggest economic priority of India for the meeting? What's the biggest priority for the Indians in the U.S.? Something like the economic priority. Well, for both sides, I think both sides share a common purpose, is to get the relationship moving again. And I think as Rahul said, we already feel it, it's palpable. Things are clearing away, issues, there has been strong indications. And I think the most important thing is to get things going, send some strong signals, get some deals done, and create the right kind of environment to ensure that the investments are successful. That's gonna be a key to it. Prime Minister Modi in his speech during the Independence Day, he outlined some of his priorities. I would assume that if you followed the dialogue that he had with the Japanese a couple of weeks ago, I guess, it kind of should be indicative of what he expects to get out of the trip to the United States as well. He has very clearly mentioned that his priority for India is to build out its infrastructure, to clean the river Ganges, clean water. He's talked about sanitation. He's talked about social issues, education, and he knows that India cannot do it alone, that he needs foreign direct investment. To do that, he expects that development to come through a public-private partnership, and he wants to see what policy changes he might have to make in order to make those foreign direct investments a reality. So I, again, take from what Rahul said, is that this is not just a government-to-government meeting. It is very clear, based on all the buzz in the community, that he really wants to connect with the diaspora. He wants to connect with the business community. He wants, you know, his slogan, if you will, at that speech at the Independence Day was, make it in India. He wants to create more, what do you call, manufacturing jobs in India, and he realizes that there are political policy impediments to make that happen, and he wants to learn about those while he's here so he can make those changes. So there's a lot of optimism on the policy side as to what kind of changes he will bring about, and clearly there's a lot of optimism on the side of foreign direct investments going to India to build out the infrastructure and so on. I will say that on the U.S. side, I'll just echo what Ambassador Usherman said on stage, that even if it's not brought up every minute of every minute of the meetings, the Trade Resultation Agreement will be on the back of a lot of people's minds during that. It's the one thing, if you were to point to a thing that's out there that would begin to rebuild bridges. That's one that hopefully will be able to raise in a constructive manner, and even if it's not raised, it'll be on everybody's minds. So let's go inside there. My name is Pichar, I'm the president of FECNA. I have two questions, question number one. Is there any business strategy or planning to work with India in agricultural and irrigation system? The second question is about nuclear. The liability clause, is there any condition from a United States? These are the two questions, thank you. So the first was tech education and... No, no, agriculture and irrigation. Agriculture and irrigation. Well, on aviation. No, on agriculture and irrigation, I hate to do irrigation, but I can definitely introduce you to my colleagues who handle that portfolio and work with agriculture and the food supply companies that we work with, both Indian and American, I can connect you with them and get you an answer. I personally don't cover that portfolio, so I can only tell you about missiles. We tried a few years ago to renew because there's still our remembrances that the United States' role in helping India's green revolution in the 60s was critical, and that's still something that we can kind of hang our hats on. And a couple of years ago, they tried to relaunch under the banner of the Agriculture Knowledge Initiative. But I think we just didn't, there wasn't a lot of complementarity in terms of what we were offering at that time, what India was ready to accept. And I don't think that Modi has really kind of elicited a strong position yet on what he plans to do because of any sector in India, agriculture is still under the heaviest regulations. The inputs are subsidized, the product itself is bought by government, only sold to government markets. So there's a lot of reform that you think would be possible there, but in terms of what the United States is prepared to offer on those things, we don't know the Modi agenda, I think quite as well as we know on manufacturing and infrastructure yet. Well, it's kind of interesting. Again, under the views program that I talked about the six areas, agriculture is a very interesting one. There was a study conducted by Hutt Co in India, the housing and urban development cooperative in India, and they found that 60 or 65% of all of India's agricultural produce was wasted and lost in the supply chain. So when companies like Walmart and others wanted to go to India and build out, we thought from the US perspective, that that was an excellent initiative to improve India's supply chain challenges. And there are a lot of other statistics. So for example, 70% of India's agricultural produce comes from 3,500 village clusters. So just building out the infrastructure to connect these village clusters, improving local storage, promoting local canning facilities and mass production facilities by just reducing the waste from 60% to 10 or 15%, India could become the bread basket for a lot of Southeast Asia. So the opportunities are enormous. And when we put the numbers together to build out that infrastructure, it was a trillion dollar kind of an opportunity just to build out the supply chain requirements. And guess what? Most of the technology is right here in the US for very large scale canning, freeze drying and so on and so forth. So those opportunities are there and it's a matter of raising the awareness and removing the impediments to, the policy impediments to companies such as Walmart and others to get into it and improve the supply chain processes. So I think there is some real opportunity there and maybe US-IMC can take that up. I read way too much on India stuff, but once in a while an article sticks out that gets stuck in your brain for a long time and last year won vegetable prices and they were really spiking. The Economist had one of these little side articles that was meant to be kind of a throw away. The Journey of an Onion. Oh yeah. Yeah. If you haven't read it, read it. This talks about from the onion getting plucked out of the ground until it gets into a city, the various things that goes through the secret handshakes underneath blankets, the number of times it has to get dumped on the ground, squashed and reloaded back in a truck. The various stops on the way to ultimately being sold. Those little side pieces once in a while tell you greater stories than 50 articles otherwise. Yeah. All the way in the back. Oh, the second question on nuclear. Well, I think civilly nuclear liability. We gotta find an answer for that and I don't think the company say that the answer can come from anywhere except for an amendment to the law which so far we've not seen a lot of willingness. There's been other attempts to find side deals that could compliment that, that could fix that but so far I don't think anything's been drawn conclusively on others. Nothing that's further along I think than ours that I'm more of. Yeah, Brian in the back. Thanks Rick. Brian Pomperey can go. US business community has been pretty vocally critical of some Indian policies the last few years and I'm just wondering if you think the Prime Minister and his visit will be more open to responding to some of these criticism particularly some of the very difficult issues dealing with the intellectual property, forced localization, these measures which are obviously very difficult issues but do you think that the Prime Minister will be more open perhaps than previous governments to responding to those complaints? I actually do. I think there've already been very positive signs. Some of these issues that you raise are very difficult but first and foremost the Prime Minister is engaging directly with a lot of businesses when he's here. I just don't recall that happening in the past with any past Indian Prime Minister or you know, Prime Ministers of other countries it's just such a direct engagement and I think that is going to be very, very helpful. But you know we do need to get these issues resolved so the Prime Minister is starting off with a very strong message that is just very welcome, business friendly, red carpet, these are all very important signals but you know we have to see what comes of it but so far the early signals are good. I think even with the new administration there's been maybe a reflection here that if we really want to make progress on some of these big issues like intellectual property there has to be a different way. We've got to listen carefully to what the needs are there in India and we want them, we want India to listen carefully to our concerns about promoting innovation so I think it's going to have to, it's going to need to be both sides working together but so far the signals are good we obviously need to see what's happened, what's going to happen, we've seen some positive signs I think it's Minister Jaitley talking about international standards in the case of taxation so you know there's some good early signs we have this experience in having very successful track record in Gujarat so the jury's out but the early signs are very positive. They're in the very few first dates of his administration where some public release is made on specifically intellectual property and the judicial process through which violations of intellectual property would be handled and they were clarified, revised and then released by the Prime Minister's office and there's a website PIB.NIC.IN that's the Press Information Bureau and you can do pretty easily searches actually for intellectual property and you can see what comes up and I can just guarantee you because of how public that debate was and how high visibility the IP debate was just a few months ago we were really closely tracking any developments there now in the Washington community the intellectual property debate took its own tone took its own it manifested in its own way and I think we have a still out of cycle review results still pending so to speak due and I believe October with the deputy USTR, Wendy Kupper and India right now I think that this is still an ongoing dialogue so I just want to reiterate that in the aerospace and defense context when we're talking about transfer of technology that's heavily IP as well and there have been no what we call section 3 ITAR violations of any reverse engineering or of any violation of the anti-tamper mechanisms that they have in place so in that there's some solid grounding but of course in the other sectors where there's IP concerns those are being addressed right now and I'm sure you know our colleagues that handle that at the US Indie Business Council as well Amy and Michael so that's a dialogue that I would just encourage everyone here who's interested in it to look at that series of press releases on the Press Information Bureau PIB.NIC.IN We've got time for one more really quick one who's over here closest to this got their hands up, Abhi. All right. Good morning, my name is Namanjan. Rahul, you were talking about the prospective joint development of technology between US and India. Could you see that as a potential reinvigoration of Obama's Pivot to Asia? The part right before the Pivot to Asia? Like could you see that being reinvigorating that Pivot to Asia because there's been a lot of debate about you know how well that Pivot has worked so could that be a possible reinvigoration? I don't think there should be a debate about how well the Pivot has worked because it's working. The reallocation of naval assets to the Indian Ocean region is one tangible example but the overall refocus on engaging strategic partners and democracies such as India in the South Asia region is very much I think a consistent procedure that this administration across the board has already pursued. Whether it's defense sales and this new DTTI which is part of the rebalance that's one aspect of it. Discussing post-2014 Afghanistan withdrawal I imagine that conversation changing on a day to day basis at this point and also talking about Indian Ocean securitization and the Arabian Sea in the Bay of Bengal some of the key cooperative mechanisms we can pursue through our navies and looking at joint exercises with Japan such as Malabar looking at Air Force joint exercises like Red Flag here in Nevada. The rebalance is real and Secretary Hagel when he was there this past month re-emphasized a lot of those tangibles and restated that to the brand new Indian government about what the significance and value of the rebalance and the pivot is and I can assure you it's very real. Well let me ask my panelists any closing thoughts that you weren't able to cover in your remarks or the question and answer? I think there's some really great themes that came out here today. I think the visit itself is the prime deliverable. The fact that this got on the agenda is happening faster than most of us realize. Business meetings may ultimately prove to have at least as much substance as the government to government meetings will. And a personal thought but we complain that the relationship had become transactional. That may happen under Modi and I don't think transactional needs to be a bad thing. I think companies and governments that sit down across the table from him and say sir, if you can give this, I can give that. That's the way that he operated in Gujarat and it was a pretty effective way of operating. So don't hold transactional as necessarily a negative and transformative. Like when we talk about the relationship, there's a lot of things that might happen. There's a few pretty good things that are gonna happen. Shell gas exports to India will begin at least from the two facilities that have been licensed already. The Defense Framework Agreement expires next year and I see a strong commitment both sides to resigning that. So there's some good things that you can be sure are gonna happen. And lastly on the visit itself, I look back to 2004 in January on when we signed the Next Steps and Strategic Partnership at that time. That was another agreement for a talk shop and I know a lot of us get a little bit tired on more agreements for talk shops. But it was that talk shop that resulted in the single biggest deal that we ever signed together, the nuclear deal, less than one year later. So just the idea if the deliverables from the bilat end up being more opportunities to engage, we're talking to a different group and the opportunities through engagement, that's really where the meat substance comes from later on. So we might see it six months later, a year later. But I'm pretty excited to see what happens out of this. But thank you all for joining me. Please join me in welcoming her guest. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Very impressive. I'm the doc. How's it going? Hey, y'all. What's happening?