'Deal-making necessary, we must negotiate with US'

JAIPUR: Former US ambassador to India

Robert Blackwill

said at the

Jaipur Literature Festival

on Sunday that although he was not in favour of Donald Trump as 45th president of the United States, there was no need to think of his country as "permanently changed". There are contractual ties that bind the US – these would ensure a measure of continuity. Besides, Trump’s margin of victory was very narrow, he pointed out, saying that if even 80,000 voters had voted differently, the results might have been very different.

Professor Devesh Kapur of the Centre for the Advanced Study of India at

Pennsylvania University

said that India did have huge stakes in what occurred in the US – Indians were the second-largest group of immigrants to that country; if the H1B visa regime is affected, then the way in which many Indians find their way to the US will be hit. The information technology sector in India would not escape being adversely impacted.

Foreign policy analyst C Raja Mohan pointed out that Trump, after all, is a businessman. He comes to statecraft from a vantage point different from earlier presidents. He said that "deal-making" is not to be seen as necessarily negative – India too must understand that negotiation is necessary and be ready to enter into such arrangements. Journalist Jyoti Malhotra, who was moderating the discussion on Sunday at JLF, attempted to draw comparisons between Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The panelists, however, were wary of making such comparisons and reminded her that it was still too early to begin an assessment of the Trump regime – it was, after all, just the third day of his presidency.