The friendship shared by India and the US is the culmination of an effort that began with Clinton and was sustained by Bush before the baton passed to Obama.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s voice takes on a honeyed tone every time he utters his “good friend’’ Barack Obama’s name. He calls the outgoing president Barack, showing scant regard for protocol and convention.
The Modi-Obama bromance has been the public face of India-US ties in recent times. US Ambassador to India Richard Verma described the last two years as the best in bilateral relations. In a recent communique, he highlighted a ten-day period in August 2016 during which Obama and Modi met twice, first at the G-20 summit in Hangzhou, China, and then in Laos at the East Asia Summit, bringing their official meeting count up to eight. At the same time, American Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Commerce Penny Sue Pritzker were in Delhi for the second annual strategic and commercial dialogue and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar was in Washington, DC, meeting with Defence Secretary Ash Carter to finalise a long-pending logistics agreement.
The quickly-forged-and-as-quickly-tested personal rapport between the two leaders (the Paris climate deal deadlock was resolved when Obama phoned Modi) lent a much needed personal touch to dealings that are complex and take a lot of deliberation before reaching the table for signatures.
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