India-US partnership in governance part of new paradigm: Singh

Washington: The cooperation between India and the US in meeting modern-day governance challenges such as tackling terrorism and megacity policing is part of a "new paradigm" of collaboration between the world's two largest democracies, India's Ambassador to US Arun K Singh today said.

"Our cooperation with the US in various aspects of governance of mega-cities is part of a whole new paradigm of working together and forming habits of cooperation between the world's two largest democracies," Singh said.

"It takes diplomacy beyond the nation-state... Policing and civic governance are under the purview of our state governments in India. Hence, the experience of our collaboration in this field will also be richly varied," he said at a programme at American think-tank Atlantic Council.

To meet the challenges of modern-day policing in megacities, India has undertaken Megacity Policing Initiative with focus on building the technology capability of the police forces, he said.

Currently, police forces in seven cities - Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Ahmedabad - are being modernised under this scheme.

CCTV surveillance, command-control centre, dial 100 system, fusion or data centre, highway patrol cars and aerial surveillance are some of the technological inputs to the initiative, he said.

Implementation of safe-city projects in India is critical to overall development. "Hence Megacities Policing is an important component of our overall attempt to improve our urban landscape, and beyond that, to transform India," he said, adding that India and the US are having very promising engagement on this issue.

"Megacities Policing is one of the six major components of our bilateral homeland security cooperation pursued under the Ministerial Homeland Security Dialogue," he said. Singh said technology and capacity-building have emerged as areas where US expertise and the Indian demand could be harmonised.

"Whether it is tackling terrorism, investigation of modern crimes, identification of suspects, managing intelligent traffic system or building effective command and control system or fusion centres, the US has capacities that can be considered and adapted in India for mutual benefit," he said.

Observing that security cooperation is a small subset of wide-ranging strategic partnership, Singh said India and the US are consulting and coordinating positions on global and regional issues "like never before, and have recently extended our triangular developmental collaboration to ten developing countries in Africa and Asia."

Indian and American scientists are engaged in jointly- funded research. "Our industries are co-developing defence technologies and co-producing defence equipment. Indian and American health professionals have come together to eradicate pandemics and conduct research," he said.

Singh said the depth of interaction between the two peoples is "reflected in the intensity and productivity of dialogue, consultation and collaboration."