To visit Bangalore, New Delhi.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Desai Biswal will finally make her first official visit to India next week, from March 4-6, visiting the Indian cities of Bangalore and New Delhi in her first visit to the country since assuming her new office in November.
Biswal, who heads up the State Department’s efforts in Central and South Asia, was originally supposed to go to India last month, in January, but the trip was one of the first casualties that resulted from the diplomatic row caused by the US arresting and strip-searching Devyani Khobragade on December 12.
Now, Biswal’s trip is back on, during which “Assistant Secretary Biswal will seek to further broaden and deepen the U.S.-India relationship, which President Obama has called “one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century,” said a press release by the State Department, on Friday.
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The release says that Biswal will first go to Bangalore, where she will look to create partnerships between companies in the US and India and “foster innovation.” Additionally, Biswal will also seek to bolster ties between the countries’ engineering and IT sectors, as well as economic ties between the two nations.
Following the stop in Bangalore, Biswal will move onto the capital city of New Delhi, where meetings are scheduled with “senior Indian officials to discuss the full range of bilateral and regional issues, including our shared defense, security, and economic engagement across the Indo-Pacific corridor.” She will then give a speech at the American Center in the city on March 6 before departing for the US.
“The breadth and quality of our strategic partnership with India attests to the underlying strength and salience of our relations,” said Biswal in a statement. “The United States is proud to partner with India on virtually every field of human endeavor, from innovative solutions to poverty and disease to space exploration, from counterterrorism and security cooperation to higher education and people-to-people ties. I look forward to discussing these and other issues that are vital to the well-being of our two peoples.”
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com