How NSA Ajit Doval prepared the ground for PM Modi's landmark US visit

When Narendra Modi became the prime minister in 2014, it is said, the first file Modi’s principal secretary took to him for signing was of Ajit Doval’s appointment as the National Security Advisor (NSA). Ever since, Doval has been Modi's right-hand man. No wonder, Modi gave Doval the critical assignment of negotiating with the US a landmark agreement that is set to revolutionise India-US ties which have been marked by doubts and dithering even long after both the countries realised they are the right match in strategic as well as economic terms.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's historic state visit to the US next week will see a number of important announcements heralding deeper cooperation between the two countries in the fields of technology, defence and trade. Doval had started preparing the ground for this visit much earlier, and in months of negotiations he has built a momentum for various important deals between India and the US.

Shaping up iCET

President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Modi announced on the margins of the Tokyo summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in May last year the US-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) to elevate and expand the strategic technology partnership and defence industrial cooperation between the two countries.

After that, Modi chose Doval to define and expand the initiative by negotiating with different stakeholders in the US. Doval and his US counterpart National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan launched the iCET in January this year. Doval held crucial talks with the top US leadership on this first high-level dialogue on iCET. Officials, academicians and industry experts believed the talks could be the next big milestone in the India-US relationship after the India-US nuclear deal.

iCET focuses on strengthening the US-India partnership on the technologies that will bolster both countries’ economic competitiveness and protect shared national security interests. The iCET framework will enable India-US collaboration on artificial intelligence, defence production, quantum computing, semiconductors, communication infrastructure, space projects, etc.

Before the inaugural meeting of the iCET in Washington in January, Doval and Sullivan had explored the possible contours of the deal, reaching out to think tanks, corporates and different government agencies and departments, practically all stakeholders in technology in the US and India. Doval attended the inaugural meeting with a large Indian delegation — the Ambassador of India to the US; the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India; the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization; the Secretary of the Department of Telecommunications; the Scientific Advisor to the Defense Minister; the Director General of the Defence Research and Development Organization; and senior officials from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the National Security Council Secretariat.

The inaugural meeting was followed up since then with several sets of negotiations between different stakeholders including the government departments, industry chambers, science and research institutions and military representatives. There has been an unprecedented activity in India-US dialogue in recent months on a range of issues related to technology, all to shape the iCET.

A key result of the Doval-Sullivan push to iCET is GE Aviation's offer to produce jet engines in India. GE Aviation is open to the transfer of technology to India for the indigenous manufacture of engines for India's Tejas-MK2 Light Combat Aircraft. The GE deal, which has been approved by the Biden Administration, will put India in a select club of four countries that manufcature jet engines. China is not part of the club yet. Another key deal as part of iCET could be a chip-making plant in India by America's Micron Technology.

It is Doval and Sullivan who have practically set the entire agenda for Modi's visit to the US next week.

The rise of Doval
Since iCET has a pronouned security and military elemnts, it was being piloted by NSAs of both countries, Doval and Sullivan. But Doval is one of the very few among he global foreign policy elite with a background in intelligence.

In India, most NSAs such as Brajesh Mishra for Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and JN Dixit, Shyam Saran and SS Menon for Manmohan Singh, had foreign service backgrounds, but Doval, a former Intelligence Bureau chief, is only the second NSA after MK Narayanan to have a professional career in intelligence. Narayanan too had headed the IB.

A 1968 batch IPS officer who spent virtually all his career in IB, Doval is credited by security experts with intelligence successes like infiltrating the Mizo National Army and planning key Myanmar- and China-related missions. His intelligence work was also crucial in Operation Black Thunder, the mop-up operation that followed Operation Blue Star, the first big action against Punjab militants in Golden Temple. Undercover work in Pakistan and the tough job of being one of the negotiators in the 1C-814 hijacking episode added sufficiently to his CV so that when BJP lost power in 2004, the Congress government appointed him as IB chief, despite Doval’s perceived closeness to BJP leaders.

Doval retired in 2005 and was considered a certainty for NSA’s job had BJP won in 2009 elections. The long wait for Doval between 2005 and 2014 was spent mostly in setting up the Vivekananda International Foundation, a Delhibased think tank with a centreright intellectual perspective.

Doval's rise from an intelligence expert to a foreign policy leader has come at a time when issues relating to economy, business, technology and national security have been overlapping significantly. iCET, which will reshape India-US relations, has a pronounced national security element. By playing key role over the past few years in India's foregn policy, including the Ukraine-Russia war, Doval has proved his mettle.

Recently Doval said that when in January this year he had gone to Washington to hold discussions on iCET, he was not sure whether the idea will be able to take off. "Today, I am much more confident and hopeful. And it is not because of what has happened at the level of the government but because of what the response was at the level of institutions," he said.

US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti has lauded the role played by Doval in shaping iCET, calling him an "international treasure". Highlighting Doval's humble origins as a village boy from Uttarakhand, the envoy said, "India's NSA has not only become a national treasure but an international treasure".