There's certainly more to it ... 'more tech, more jobs' in the emerging India-US partnership :: Flurry of new deals announced -- some are game-changers !!

(There will be mega job opportunities too..... India’s Epsilon Carbon Limited will be investing $650 million in a greenfield electric vehicle battery component factory, hiring over 500 employees over the course of five years.)

A flurry of new deals have been announced by India and the US during high-level discussions on bilateral and global issues. Some of these new arrangements worked out after talks by delegations led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden are certainly game-changers !!

General Electric (GE) says it has signed an agreement with India’s state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) to make fighter jet engines for the Indian Air Force. Memory chip firm Micron Technology also said it would invest up to $825 million in a new chip assembly and test facility in Gujarat, India, its first factory in the country.

Two other deals that would allow India to purchase 30 MQ-9B ‘Reaper’ and 31 high-altitude long-endurance drones were also unveiled. Made by General Atomics, the order is worth slightly over $3 billion. India also agreed to join the US-led Artemis Accords on space exploration and to work with NASA on a joint mission to the International Space Station in 2024.

Critical Minerals Partnership:  The United States welcomes India as the newest partner of the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), established to accelerate the development of diverse and sustainable critical energy minerals supply chains globally through targeted financial and diplomatic support of strategic projects along the value chain.  

India will join 12 other partner countries, plus the European Union, in advancing our common objectives of diversifying and securing our critical mineral supply chains. 

The MSP was started in June 2022 with the expressed goals of exchanging information on critical mineral sector opportunities to enable diversified private sector investment and catalyze public sector financing, while adhering to high environmental, social, and governance standards to advance sustainable economic development opportunities. 

India’s Epsilon Carbon Limited will be investing $650 million in a greenfield electric vehicle battery component factory, hiring over 500 employees over the course of five years.  

India’s Bharat 6G and the U.S. Next G Alliance will co-lead this public-private research.  This work will reduce costs, increase security, and improve resiliency of telecommunication networks.  With financing from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, and in partnership with USAID, India and the United States are also teaming up to launch Open RAN deployments in both countries to demonstrate the scalability of this technology to enhance its competitiveness in international markets.  The leaders also welcomed participation of Indian companies in the U.S. Rip and Replace Program.

In an apparent bid to use the visit to further India’s agenda against Islamabad, a joint statement issued by the two heads of state late on Thursday also called on Pakistan to crack down on extremists that target New Delhi, AFP reported.

The statement called for action against extremist groups based in Pakistan such as the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.

“[The two leaders] strongly condemned cross-border terrorism, the use of terrorist proxies and called on Pakistan to take immediate action to ensure that no territory under its control is used for launching terrorist attacks,” the statement said.

The statement also called on Pakistan to punish perpetrators of attacks, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Earlier in the day, the Biden administration had assured Islamabad that Washington still wanted a stable and prosperous Pakistan.  “A stable, secure, and prosperous Pakistan, is not just in the interests of the region but it’s in the interests of the United States as well,” said State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel when asked about possible US support for Pakistan’s efforts to revive an IMF aid package. (Dawn newspaper) 

NASA will provide advanced training to Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) astronauts with the goal of launching a joint effort to the International Space Station in 2024. 

Additionally, NASA and the ISRO are developing a strategic framework for human spaceflight cooperation by the end of 2023.  India approved a $318 million investment to construct a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in India—that will work in tandem with similar facilities in the United States, Europe, and Japan to look for ripples in space-time, known as gravitational waves.

India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) is making a $140 million in-kind contribution to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Fermi National Laboratory toward collaborative development of the Proton Improvement Plan-II Accelerator, for the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility – the first and largest international research facility on U.S. soil.