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A bilateral, plurilateral and a multilateral await Modi in the US

PM Modi will begin his tour to the US on Wednesday

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday, will set out for his biggest tour post the pandemic when he flies to the US for a slew of international engagements. Ever since the pandemic, the only international visit the prime minister made was to Bangladesh last year.

The US trip is important due to a number of reasons. This will be Modi's first in-person meeting with Joe Biden in his capacity as the president of the US, although the two have met on previous occasions. The India-US bilateral will be significant because of the wide range of topics covered, including Afghanistan, China, trade, vaccines and COVID-19 management.

Biden is also hosting leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad at the White House on September 24. This is the first in-person meeting of Quad leaders— India, Japan Australia and the US. A Quad virtual summit at head of government level was held earlier this year.

Modi will also be addressing the United Nations General Assembly on September 25. He will speak on India’s vaccine initiative and reiterate the need for a reformed United Nations Security Council in his address.

The PM will return to India on September 26.

Speaking to presspersons, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said the delegation will have top officials, including External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar (who is already in the US), National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and himself.

With limited contact with world leaders over the past year-and-a-half, owing to the pandemic, the events in the US are significant. This will be the first meeting of global leaders after two major global events— the pandemic and the US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Both these events have had far reaching impact in global geopolitics and are recontouring the existing word order. 

The emergence of the security pact between the US, Australia and the UK—AUKUS—ahead of the Quad Summit has raised may eyebrows, but Shringla said that there was no similarity, and therefore no clash of interests between the two groupings. While AUKUS is an out and out security pact, Quad is a plurilateral that seeks an open and inclusive Indo-Pacific and looks at a gamut of common concerns like climate change, pandemic recovery and maritime security.

It is significant that India has announced that it will restart Vaccine Maitri soon, as this will give Modi a chance to talk about India's role in the emerging world order, and help reclaim some space in the vaccines conversations again. India, which had positioned itself as Vaccinator of the World, had to step down when, hit by the second wave and increasing local vaccine demands, it had to suspend exports. Now, the conversations on vaccines are not just about securing supply chains, but also getting the world to accept India-made vaccines. The UK recently announced that it would not recognise India made Covishield, even though the vaccine has been made in collaboration with Oxford University. Shringla said India has been pushing its argument for India made vaccines. However, if there is no early resolution, India may have to invoke a reciprocal vaccine recognition approach.

Unlike his last visit, the ‘Howdy Modi’ event in Texas, this time the engagement will be low key, said Shringla. The US, he said, is seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases again, and engagements, therefore, are being worked around the pandemic restrictions.

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