India-US: Modi meets top US tech leaders amid semicounder push

Modi’s meeting with the tech leaders on Monday was attended by 15 top CEOs, including Google’s Sundar Pichai, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, IBM’s Arvind Krishna and NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang.

Addressing the gathering, Modi said, “they can co-develop, co-design, and co-produce in India for the world”.

India’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the roundtable meeting touched upon technology’s use in innovations, “which have the potential to revolutionise the global economy and human development”.

Modi also addressed a rally of Indian-Americans whom he called “brand ambassadors” of the country and told the crowd of 15,000, external in New York that India was key to “global development, global peace, global climate action, global innovations, global supply chains”.

On Saturday, Modi met US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the Quad summit and the two countries signed several agreements.

The India-US semiconductor pact – which they have described as a “watershed arrangement” – aims to establish a fabrication plant which will produce chips for national security, next-generation telecommunications and green energy applications, said a joint release, external.

This is India’s first such project, external with the US in which the country will provide chips to the US armed forces, allied militaries and Indian military.

Previous attempts at building homegrown semiconductor manufacturing industry in India have not seen desired results. But as the US aims to build resilience against China’s semiconductor industry – vital for modern technology – the deal gives a renewed fillip to India.

The Indian Express newspaper reported, external that the plant will focus on “three essential pillars for modern war fighting: advanced sensing, advanced communications and high voltage power electronics”.