For India outreach, US brings into play Indian-Americans

WASHINGTON: US secretary of state John Kerry had Nisha Desai Biswal by his side during his visit to India last week and commerce secretary Penny Pritzker had Arun Kumar. When defence secretary Chuck Hagel arrives in New Delhi on Thursday, he will bring with him Puneet Talwar.
Biswal, Kumar, and Talwar are all assistant secretaries in the Obama administration, key operational level officials who manage major programmes and implement policies.They are of sub-cabinet level rank, appointed by the President of the United States with the consent of the US Senate, and assigned to assist a specific cabinet secretary.
For decades, they have also typically been US-born Americans, particularly when it used to be the second-ranking post after the secretary of state. Now they are fourth in the pecking order after Cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries, and under-secretaries, but they are considered hands-on pointpersons in specific areas, a vital cog in the administrative wheel.
Indian-Americans have been routinely making the assistant secretary grade from the time George Bush nominated Bobby Jindal to be assistant secretary of health and human services for planning and evaluation in 2001. Generally though, they have had little to do with India.
When Karan Bhatia held the post of assistant secretary of transportation for aviation and international affairs from 2003 to 2005 and deputy US trade representative from 2005-2007, India was just part of his overall beat. Sometimes they had even less to do with India — as with Richard Verma, who was the assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs at the US department of state until March 2011.
Nisha Desai-Biswal broke the mould. An Indian-American whose family emigrated from Dahod in Gujarat when she was six, she became the first assistant secretary of subcontinental origin who was given direct charge of the region when Obama nominated her to be assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia, a region that includes India and Pakistan.
Union home minister Rajnath Singh shakes hands with US assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs Nisha Biswal as US deputy secretary of state William Joseph Burns looks on. (PTI file photo)
Arun Kumar has even closer ties to India. An undergrad from University of Kerala who later earned a degree from MIT, he started his career in India as a member of TAS, the central management cadre of the Tata Group. He later became a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and then founded and led KPMG’s US-India Practice. He is also the co-editor of Kerala’s Economy — Crouching Tiger, Sacred Cows.
Nothing in their US government career points to anything other than their loyalty to the United States, notwithstanding the gaffe by a US Congressman last month when he mistook Kumar and Biswal to be Indian officials, ostensibly because of their brown skin. The Obama administration, on its part, has hardly concealed its desire to use them for its India outreach, while recognizing their contribution America.
"America’s prosperity rests more than ever in the strength of our links to this region. Nisha’s experience and the success that so many Indian Americans bring to the American table shows to everybody in the world the deep ties that we have between the United States and India. And I know that we’re going to unlock the enormous potential of stronger economic, security, and cultural ties between our countries," Kerry said at Biswal’s swearing in.
Talwar too will be part of that unlocking mechanism, accompanying defense secretary Chuck Hagel to a country Washington finds particularly hard to crack as it found out when it lost the multi-role combat aircraft bid. Although an assistant secretary in the state department, he heads the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which interfaces closely with the department of defence.
He has also served as the special assistant to the President and senior director for Iraq, Iran, and the Gulf States at the White House National Security Council, all areas of interest to New Delhi. Most recently, he was in Tel Aviv meeting senior Israeli officials to discuss political-military issues, including, according to the administration, "security cooperation and defence trade, our efforts to ensure Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, and ways to build on our progress to date in expanding our enduring strategic partnership."
So inasmuch as the Hagel mission will also want to hawk US military hardware, there will be much else to talk about. "The Bureau of Political-Military Affairs supports the department of defence’s US-India Defence Trade and Technology Initiative, and seeks opportunities to expand peacekeeping, counter-piracy, and security cooperation," the state department said in a statement, announcing Talwar’s joining of the Hagel mission.