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Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in New York evening, marking the beginning of his first State visit to the US, which he said “will reinforce ties based on shared values of democracy, diversity and freedom”.
Together we stand stronger in meeting the shared global challenges,” Modi said, as he left for the US.
The Prime Minister is visiting the US for three days, where he will have at least three meetings with President Joe Biden – a private engagement at the White House.
In his statement ahead of departure, the Prime Minister said the special invitation from US President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden is a “reflection of the vigour and vitality of the partnership between our democracies”.
I am confident that my visit to the US will reinforce our ties based on shared values of democracy, diversity and freedom,” he said. Stating that “President Biden and I have had the opportunity to meet several times since my last official visit to the USA in September 2021, “This visit will be an opportunity to enrich the depth and diversity of our partnership.”
Express Network
First mRNA booster shot against Omicron gets DCGI approval (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Pune-based Gennova Biopharmaceuticals announced that its mRNA COVID-19 booster vaccine, GEMCOVAC-OM, against the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV2 has received emergency use authorisation from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI). A booster dose against SARS-CoV2 is still required in the country. Original vaccines have shown limited efficacy against the Omicron lineage. An updated vaccine is required and yes, we anticipate enough demand in the market for the precautionary dose.
The launch is expected within two to three weeks in New Delhi where details on the cost and anticipated demand will be announced. At present, 12 lakh booster doses of GemCOVAC-OM are available at the Central Drugs Laboratory (CDL), Kasauli, which has the mandate of national regulations of vaccines produced indigenously for the domestic market.
Editorial
Making of a high point (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The India-US relationship is reaching a new high point. But the significance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to the US will be obscured by short-term political framings.
There will be the sheer political theatre of the US courting India and the Prime Minister leveraging this moment to shore up his domestic political legitimacy.
There will be the disappointment of those who think the Biden Administration is actually going out of its way to give its imprimatur on the state of India’s democracy. But “democracy” was not going to be an issue in this phase of India-US relations.
For all American administrations, democracy has been a geo-strategic tool. Few things provoke more cynicism about democracy than its advocacy by the US government.
But more importantly, the prestige of American democracy is at its lowest point in recent memory. There will also be a great deal of rewriting of history, with all the uninformed condescension of posterity. India is overcoming its “historic hesitations”, we will intone, as if serious foreign policy began only in 2014.
Indeed, we would do well to remember that India’s current success and its strong bargaining position is built on those “historic hesitations” that kept us independent.
The most striking thing about the current moment is the sheer asymmetry of what the US is offering. It is offering high-end technology and co-production possibilities with a power that is not an ally. It is framing this relationship as a long-term partnership where India becomes important to US supply chains.
India, in turn, leverages these relationships to create a manufacturing eco-system. It is doing this despite India’s manifest weaknesses. India’s growth is decent. But even we have scaled back our aspirations down to the 6 per cent range.
Ideas Page
No holding back (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
In celebrating the new milestones in the India-US relationship this week in Washington it is easy to miss the main source of unprecedented optimism about the future of bilateral relations.
Some would want to dismiss the surging enthusiasm as “irrational exuberance”. Historically, though, scepticism has been the dominant feature of India-US relations.
The message from the White House talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Joe Biden this week will be a simple one — that the train of India-US strategic partnership is now leaving the station to more productive destinations. The sceptics can continue to pick nits.
Over the last two decades, the India-US relationship has consistently defied predictions about the presumed limits to it. Yet, the expansive agenda before Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden this week is quite different from the earlier encounters. Until recently, the political focus of the bilateral relationship was on removing the multiple obstacles to cooperation, many of which stemmed from political resistance rooted in ideological suspicion and the recalcitrance of the administrative state that refused to build on the natural synergies between the two nations.
The ambition of Modi and Biden now is to look ahead and construct one of the most consequential bilateral relationships in the world.
Explained
India-US: Trust & necessity (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
In September 2008, after the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group’s (NSG) waiver to the Indo-US nuclear deal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “It marks the end of India’s decades long isolation from the nuclear mainstream and technology denial regime.”
In June 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the US Congress that India and the US have overcome “the hesitations of history”, and called for ever-stronger economic and defence ties.
Six years later, the end of the “technology denial regime” and the overcoming of the “hesitations of history” had developed into the Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET), which President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Modi announced in May 2022.
At Bonn climate meet, old conflicts – and some forward movement (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The Bonn climate change conference that finished last week was built up as an opportunity for course correction. With current global efforts to keep rising temperatures in check abysmally inadequate, a massive and immediate scale-up in climate action is essential to keep alive any realistic chance of meeting the 1.5 degree or 2 degree Celsius targets. Bonn was expected to act as the springboard for accelerated action.
But just like the more famous year-ending climate conferences, Bonn underperformed. Developed and developing countries bickered on issues old and new, and could not even agree on the agenda of one of the meetings till the penultimate day.
Economy
RBI defends compromise settlement, says lenders to exercise discretion (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) defended its controversial circular allowing banks to undertake compromise settlements or technical write-offs in respect of accounts categorised as wilful defaulters or fraud, stating that compromise settlement is not available to borrowers as a matter of right, but a “discretion to be exercised by the lenders based on their commercial judgement”.
According to the RBI, the primary regulatory objective of the circular — issued on June 8, 2023 — is to enable multiple avenues to lenders to recover the money in default without much delay.
Apart from the time value loss, inordinate delays result in asset value deterioration which hampers ultimate recoveries. Compromise settlement is recognized as a valid resolution mechanism under the Prudential Framework on Resolution of Stressed Assets dated June 7, 2019.
Banks reported as many as 16,044 borrowers with a debt of Rs 346,479 crore in the wilful default category — borrowers who refuse to repay loans despite having the capacity to make payments — as of December 2022 who will be able to approach the lenders for compromise settlement following the RBI decision to change the rules for eligibility.
The amount stuck in the wilful default category has jumped by 41 per cent, or over Rs one lakh crore in the last two years from Rs 245,767 crore in December 2020.