Robert Blackwill

New Delhi : Going by what former U.S. ambassador to India Robert Blackwill says, President George W. Bush and his core team of top policy advisers are the best bet for the growing U.S.-India relations.

“I can’t think of a better and more talented team to push Indo-U.S. relations,” said Blackwill, who was in India in his new incarnation as high-profile lobbyist and president of Barbour Griffith and Rogers, a top Washington-based lobbying firm. “Most importantly, Bush has a global approach to India as a world power,” Blackwill emphasized. He was speaking at an interactive meeting organized by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here on Jan. 10. He was also to attend the two-day 11th CII Partnership Summit in Kolkata that began on Jan. 12.

In an emotive tone, he recalled a thousand smells of India, its spirituality, its cricket madness and all that makes “Mother India” a unique country of the mind to be in. “The rise of India and China as great world powers is more important than the dissolution of the Soviet Union,” said Blackwill. Apart from a friendly Bush administration, Blackwill also enumerated a confluence of factors like a strong and successful Indian-American community and more Bobby Jindal-type people of Indian origin in U.S. politics which is sure to make “2005 a great year for U.S.-India relations.”