India and the US have taken their strategic relationship to a new level. The

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two countries concluded three major agreements in defence, space and science & technology on Monday, the last of the five days that US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton was in India.

New Delhi and Washington decided to open a new strategic dialogue with Clinton and the Indian external affairs minister, S M Krishna, as co-chairpersons. The dialogue will encompass the key areas of energy, education and finance and also be a forum for interactions among academics, civil society groups and intellectuals of the two countries at the non-governmental level.

As if to underline India’s strategic importance in its scheme of things, the Obama administration invited prime minister Manmohan Singh to the US. Through Clinton, President Obama conveyed to Singh that he would be a state guest. This will an encore of similar honour India received in the US during the presidency of George Bush and Bill Clinton.

The defence and technology agreements were accomplished smoothly but not before India raised some issues of concern to it, the primary of them being the protectionist policies pursued by the Obama administration that have hit service exports and movement of manpower.

External affairs ministry officials told Financial Chronicle that the visiting US delegation did not have plausible answers to these issues.

The prime minister himself voiced India’s concern and cited the G-20 declaration that rejected protectionism. The US is a party to this declaration.

Yet, the bonhomie between the two sides was palpable. Both reiterated their commitment to take forward the multilateral dialogue at WTO, implying that both US and India would work towards concluding the Doha round of trade talks at the earliest.

A new technology safeguards agreement that was signed will allow the launch of satellites with US payloads and equipment from Indian soil. This was not permitted so far. But the use of such satellites will be monitored to prevent diversion or misuse of high- technology US equipment.

The ‘end use’ monitoring agreement will ease the sale of US military hardware to India. This implies that US companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing will get to access the Indian market for fighter aircraft. India is currently in the market to procure 126 fighter aircraft to replace its aging Russian fleet.

Another agreement was for the commercialisation of research & development that takes forward an October 2005 pact between two countries.

On the economic front, both sides committed to take their strategic partnership to a higher level in the global context to ensure speedy economic recovery.

Clinton also announced president Obama’s commitment to the civil nuclear agreement signed during the preceding presidency of George Bush.

The new strategic dialogue between the two will rest on five pillars: health, education, energy, finance and defence ties.

During her visit, Clinton also met Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

At the end of the visit, Clinton, who is also the architect of the India caucus in the Senate, told a press conference that the strategic dialogue was key to ‘deepening and broadening’ the relationship between the two countries.