US President Joe Biden has been working to “send a message to China” by strengthening ties with India, and the announcements of major investment plans by Amazon and Google only add fuel to the fire.
After CEO Andy Jassy met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the United States, Amazon announced that it will increase its investment in India to $26 billion by 2030, an increase of $6.5 billion from previous plans.
Despite the lack of specifics, Jassy’s declaration follows Amazon’s cloud computing division Amazon Web Services’s announcement from last month that it will invest INR1.06tr in the country by the end of 2030.
During Modi’s state visit, several corporations have made pledges, including the e-commerce giant. These enterprises include US semiconductor toolmaker Applied Materials and memory chip manufacturer Micron Technology.
Google also announced that it will be opening a global fintech operation center in GIFT City, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, where teams would focus on operations supporting Google’s GPay payment service and other product operations.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai was recently recorded telling reporters, “We shared Google is investing $10 billion in the India digitisation fund, and we are continuing to invest through that,” in a video that was tweeted out by Reuters’s partner ANI firm.
Modi meets influential Indians in US
On the last day of his tour, Modi met with American and Indian IT executives like Tim Cook from Apple, Google’s Pichai, and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, urging them to set up shop in India and support the “Make in India” initiative.
One intimate and one gala dinner, a meeting with senior CEOs, and a long list of specific takeaways, including agreements on US engines for India’s new home-grown fighter-jets and a huge semiconductor factory, were all part of Biden’s state visit for Modi.
“Trying to tell the world that America is back,” Biden says. “We have partners and allies, and we have India on our side of the ledger,” explained Aparna Pande, a specialist on South Asia at the Hudson Institute.
Biden wants to “send a message to China — you have your people and I have my people, and India is among mine,” she said.
With defense deliverables on par with what the United States would give a Nato or other treaty friend, former State Department official Tamanna Salikuddin dubbed the joint statement made during Modi’s visit “remarkable” in its extent.
When you look at the breadth and depth of our commitment to India, you have to put them in a distinct category. As Salikuddin, current director of South Asia programming at the US Institute of Peace, put it, “I think that is what Modi wanted.” Despite increasing efforts to control tensions, the Biden administration views China as the most serious long-term adversary to the United States.
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