It's for this reason that I am greatly optimistic about the possibilities for partnership and I want to think about what we, the US-India Business Council, can do to help.
The first task we have is to continue our advocacy for deeper trade and commercial ties between the two nations. The door for relationships in business is now ajar. We need to keep pushing it open. We need to ensure that US companies are aware of the opportunities from infrastructure investment in India. We must then support a bilateral investment treaty with India, on which I understand that discussions are going well. We must also accelerate technology transfer and collaboration in many fields including agriculture.
And while I hope that my comments today will stir action, I am not laying responsibility solely at the door of government. I think companies can and must take the lead. I am very proud of PepsiCo's clear commitment to sustainability in India. Through major agri-initiatives in Punjab, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, PepsiCo is helping to lay the groundwork for the long term economic and social prosperity for farmers.
Our conservation and reclamation efforts in our plants reflect our commitment to protect and preserve India's most precious resource, water. We have also established plastic bottle recycling supply chains to further reduce solid waste. And of course PepsiCo is not alone. USIBC members across a range of industries are investing and building in India, and contributing to the well-being of communities.
There is so much we can do. Great progress has been made since 1991 but we have done a fraction of what we might. Two nations which share a common-law legal tradition and a language ought to be much more deeply bound than they are. Trade between the US and India is still one tenth of US-China trade. I am not sure that business in the US has yet fully grasped the scale of the opportunity in India. As the UISBC, we must arrange the meetings that will change their minds.
I have one final way of trying to encapsulate what the new India might hold in store.
One morning in Madras in 1978 a young woman set out for the United States. For that generation it seemed the most obvious journey to make, for those who could. It was rarely easy, especially in the beginning. But perhaps that journey today does not seem so obvious or so necessary. Has India already grown to the point where the bigger opportunities lie at home, not in the promise from overseas? Is that day coming soon? Perhaps that callow young woman who left Madras all those years ago will have few successors.
I believe that India's hour is at hand. There is great promise to be fulfilled, great potential to be realised. As in years past, the USIBC finds itself right at the leading edge. So my call to you this morning, as your new chairman and as a devoted servant to the betterment of US-India relations, is that we continue to do our part to bring these two great democracies together.
If we do our work well, then I dream that all those extraordinary Indians residing all over the world will find their next generation back at home, in the amazing, abundant, talented land of India.
Image: The benchmark 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex index crosses 20,000 points for the first time, October 29, 2007. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: 'India is a land of billion opportunities'
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