Greater Enthusiasm for India ties after Modi Government: Nirupama Rao

New Delhi, Jan 23 (IANS) US President Barack Obama's visit to India "takes the road ahead to a full-blown India-US partnership", according to former Indian ambassador Nirupama Rao who said there was greater enthusiasm for India in the US after Narendra Modi came to power.

Speaking at the Third India Today Global Roundtable here Friday, Rao said there was palpable change in the way the Americans view India since the past few years.

Rao, addressing a session on "Bridging the Distance between India and the US", said Obama's visit was an important occasion for one billion Indians.

She said the three-million-strong Indian diaspora was a major factor in the relationship.

Terming the current relationship transformational, Rao said factors like promoting clean energy, building skills of youth, FDI in retail, strengthening defence cooperation through technology transfers and resolving the civilian nuclear energy deal, will govern the relations between the two democracies.

Rao also stressed the fact that India needs to be far more assertive in relations with the US concerning the terror emanating from Pakistan.

She said the vision that defines this complex relationship was the mutual understanding of threats, the common interest in keeping maritime interests free, keeping capitalism and trade on track as well as a common thought on counter-terrorism.

On the India-China relationship through a US prism, Rao said when the US talks about rebalancing Asia, both India and China were central to that view.

She said neither India nor the US seek an inclusion or isolation of China.

"Both of us seek a mutually-beneficial relationship with China," Rao said.

Former diplomat Hardeep Puri said movement on the India-US civil nuclear deal has been slow and that it was a superficial view to say that there has been no movement at all.

Addressing a session titled "Indo-US nuclear deal - Dead on arrival or waiting to Exhale?", Puri who has joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, said he was cautiously optimistic on the deal working out.

Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury said his party had objections at the way the US was denying India complete flow of technology despite signing the deal in 2004.

He said the US was continuing to ban the transfer of high-end technology to India.