A top U.S. expert on South Asia and former U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka from 1992-95, Teresita Schaffer predicted during a video interview with GlobalAtlanta that India and the United States would develop even closer political and economic ties in coming decades.

Ms. Schaffer was in Atlanta for lectures at Emory University and to meet with local businesspeople including members of the Indo-American community at the Metro Atlanta Chamber Oct. 29.

“This has been one of the great success stories,” she said of the U.S.’s two-way trade with India that totals to more than $60 billion annually, counting services, and establishes the U.S. as India’s “most important trading partner.”

Ms. Schaffer served 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service and is currently director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Washington.

Her assessment of the strategic partnership between the U.S. and India is documented in her most recent book “India and the United States in the 21st Century: Reinventing Partnership.”

Emory professor and former diplomat Marion Creekmore, who served as ambassador to Sri Lanka from 1989-92, accompanied her visit on the campus.

Her lectures were particularly timely in view of the anticipated visit to Washington of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Nov. 24. As prime minister from 1991-96, Dr. Singh is widely credited for carrying out the economic reforms in India, which prompted its current growth.

The reforms included opening the country to international trade and investment, deregulation of its industries, privatization, tax reform and instituting measures to contain inflation.

During the interview, Ms. Schaffer also underscored the growing economic impact of the 2 million Indian-Americans nationwide.

“This is the most prosperous and best educated single ethnic group in the country,” she said.

She described how her brother, a former chief financial officer at Netscape Communications Inc., told her about the strong bonds forged between Indian and U.S. information technology professionals. “They seemed to be joined at the hip,” she said, “and will maintain these relationships.”

Ms. Schaffer listed India’s growing economy, the stability of its democratic regime and a growing convergence of interests as important factors accounting for the partnership between India and the U.S.

“Our common interests are going to keep pushing us together,” she said of the future ties between the two nations. She specifically mentioned the development of information technology and mutual interest in Asian prosperity, stability and Indian Ocean security as shared initiatives that will keep the nations working together.

In light of the anticipated visit of Dr. Singh, she discussed the current administration’s relations with India including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit in July.

“She made her own personal impact on India” and was “greeted like a rock star,” she said of the Clinton trip.

Despite controversy surrounding a renewal of the India-U.S. nuclear deal, a bilateral accord establishing civil nuclear cooperation with India created by the administration of former President George W. Bush, she forecasted a mostly positive relationship evolving.

She mentioned that she thought there would be mutual agreement concerning the development of the world’s financial system; some controversy over trade, particularly continued protection of both countries’ agricultural sectors, and acute disagreement on climate change issues with India resisting a pro-active stance by the U.S.

Ms. Schaffer also addressed the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, which, she said, is based on an entirely different set of assumptions.

“The U.S. government has made policy towards India out of hope for the benefits if things go right in contrast to Pakistan, where I think its policy has been largely driven by fear of what happens if things go wrong,” she said.

Moreover, she added, reports of internal insurgency, terrorism and nuclear weapons have come to characterize Pakistan’s global reputation. “If it bleeds, it leads,” she said of the current focus on violence and terrorism in Pakistan.

She added that such a climate of instability can become a “crippling disability” for national economic development, as investors are less willing to put their money at risk in a politically unstable environment.

She further discussed what issues the U.S. has faced in helping develop both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In Afghanistan, Ms. Schaffer emphasized the difficulty of development in a nation in which the population struggles to perform basic activities, such as farming or building rudimentary housing, due to instability.

“How are you going to get a subsistence level economy going when the thing that gives them subsistence is so hard to do because of insecurity,” she said of economic progress in Afghanistan.

Ms. Schaffer acknowledged that Pakistan operates at a higher level, although aid programs in the country exemplify problems in the current grassroots level approach to aid.

“One of the problems we face is the result of good intentions,” Ms. Schaffer said of the U.S. aid programs. While focusing on providing current help to the most disadvantaged people with basic education and health in the countrysides, U.S. rural aid programs have been invisible to the elites and urban populations.

Furthermore, she said, those being helped do not see the aid as an American contribution. Ms. Schaffer instead suggested that aid be channeled towards infrastructure.

“In a country where power cuts have gotten up to 16 hours a day, having more electric power could be beneficial to everybody and could start to change the image of the United States,” she said of potential aid programs in Pakistan.

She noted that such an approach would help create a collaborative relationship that could ultimately allow the U.S. to not only work with Pakistan on its economic development, but also on the U.S.’s greater security issues.

On a larger scale, Ms. Schaffer sees a positive development of global relations in the future. While previewing the continuing progress of telecommunications and growing connections between people, she predicted that education and work will take on an increasingly international dimension.

She underscored the importance of foreign language instruction and encouraged ethnic populations to use their language skills to maintain relations with their home countries.

To learn more about Ms. Schaffer’s visit to Atlanta, send an e-mail to Ani Agnihotri, managing partner of the U.S. India Business and Research Center in Atlanta, to ani.agnihotri@gmail.com.