'Indo-US partnership more confident; but requires nurturing'

As the Obama Administration gears itself to "strengthen" its bilateral relationship with India, a top American business leader has said the Indo-US partnership, though now more confident than ever, requires nurturing.     

"Now we are at a stage wherein the Indo-US partnership is getting more and more confident, but it still requires nurturing. It is a newly strong relationship," US India Business Council (USIBC) President Ron Somers told PTI in an interview.     

Representing some 310 American companies having a presence in India — 220 of which figure in the Fortune 500 list - USIBC is the largest and most influential of American trade bodies in the US related to India.     

"...The Indo-US relationship has now achieved the crescendo... Achieved a critical mass where the synergies of both of our countries are now finding one another and we are going to, in the private sector, with these synergies shape the destiny of the 21st century," Somers said sitting in the US Chamber of Commerce office located across the White House.     

As USIBC head, Somers had play a key role in galvanising US industry to convince American lawmakers of the significance of the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, which finally lead to its Congressional approval and then its signing into law by the US President George Bush last year.

"We still have a long way to go," Somers said referring to the wide gap between the Indo-US bilateral trade and those of the US-China. At the same time, he said the two countries have covered much of the distance in the past one decade, in particular after the June 2005 visit of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington.     

The US companies, he argued now feel the importance of doing business with India.     

"I think, India has demonstrated that consistently for the last 18 years after the economic reforms began, be it any government, everyone of them have been advancing the economic reforms. That is heartening and sending the right signal," he said, adding this is now captured in the minds of the American business and corporate leaders.