US President Barack Obama’s second visit to India has resurrected hopes that the two countries will revive talks on the dormant but in-progress Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). A BIT is being eagerly sought by both sides — from the United States, to provide comfort to American companies that they will not be treated unfairly, and from India in the belief that it will help increase foreign investment inflows into the country.
But negotiating the many tripwires of the BIT will take time and effort. It may, therefore, be wise to rein in the optimism that is usually generated by high-profile state visits and the associated optics. More so because every significant India-US bilateral visit in recent times — by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington DC in September 2014, by US Secretary of State John Kerry to India in June 2014 and January 2015, and by US Trade Representative Michael Froman in November 2014 — has rekindled expectations about the abandoned BIT.