As the US presidential elections rapidly approach and the world bids farewell to the Biden administration, how far have US-India relations travelled over the last four years and where might they go next? This is the big-picture question that Ashley J. Tellis, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the US-India ties, addressed in the season premiere of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In the episode, which aired last week, Tellis assessed the Biden administration’s handling of the explosive “murder-for-hire plot”, the unfinished business of the US-India civil nuclear deal, and how the outcome of the US election might shape the trajectory of bilateral ties.
Tellis, who holds the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, admitted that many in New Delhi were initially skeptical of the Biden administration. “The suspicion about the Biden administration at the start, at least on the Indian end, was partly motivated by the prejudice that Democratic administrations have not been as favorable to India in the way their Republican counterparts have been,” said Tellis. “But, to be fair, there was another element which contributed to that perception and that was President Biden himself making clear that his presidency would be marked by an effort to rebuild democracy because democracy was under threat by authoritarian regimes.
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