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US and India need to turn on the trillion-dollar tap, says Mumbai thinktank
WASHINGTON: A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon we are talking real money, a famous US Senator (Everett Dirksen) is believed to have joked at a time (1950s) a billion was big bucks even in the United States. A trillion is the number thrown out in the 21st century. Only a few countries (15) have trillion dollar economies (India's joined the ranks in 2007), and certainly no company, not even Apple, had hit that landmark. The world's largest trade relationship, between US and Canada, rolls over $650 billion annually, followed by US-China at around $600 billion.
But in an audacious projection, a report from the thinktank Gateway House released on the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to US is forecasting a $1 trillion partnership between the two countries by 2030, a ten-fold increase from the $100 billion mark that has just been reached. It's double the $500 billion target set by Vice-President Joe Biden during his visit to India in July last year, and given the business boondoggles that have blighted the ties so far, it might well be a pie in the sky.
Not so, maintains Nish Acharya, a former Obama administration official who authored the report for the Mumbai thinktank that aims to bridge the gap between business and foreign policy. Acknowledging that the short-term relations between the two countries have never been aligned, Acharya paraphrases President Kennedy to argue that the United States and India must strive to create a trillion dollar economic relationship "not because it is easy, because it is hard." It is also natural, Acharya said in an interview on Sunday, because the two countries have complementary strengths, primarily the systems thinking and deep knowledge of the US, and process innovation and human capital of India.