Tatsat Chronicle Magazine

What to Expect From the First Quad Summit in Person

September 28, 2021
Quad summit 2021

PM Modi, along with his counterparts from Australia and Japan, attended the Quad leaders’ first in-person meeting on Friday

The four presidents will meet for the second time this year as part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, which was established following the Asian disaster of 2004. Analysts say the group has emerged as the most crucial democratic bulwark against China’s growing dominance in recent years.

Biden is meeting with all four Quad leaders for the first time: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. It’s a rare journey abroad for several of them during the pandemic. Modi also visited Bangladesh in March, but this will be his first travel outside of India’s local region since early 2020.

Earlier in the day, US President Joe Biden said that the relationship between India and the United States, the world’s two largest democracies, is destined to be “stronger, closer, and tighter,” as he hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House for the first bilateral meeting and discussed a wide range of priority issues, including Covid-19, climate change, trade, and the Indo-Pacific. As they meet at the start of the third decade of this century, Prime Minister Modi hailed the bilateral summit with Biden as “essential.”

PM Modi met with US Vice President Kamala Harris and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday. He also met with the CEOs of Qualcomm, Adobe, First Solar, General Atomics, and Blackstone in one-on-one talks to discuss a variety of topics ranging from drones to 5G, semiconductors, and solar power. PM Modi urged them to increase their investments by emphasising India’s huge prospects. Prime Minister Modi will also deliver a speech to the United Nations General Assembly as he travels from Washington DC to New York. According to sources familiar with the situation, his timetable is still being established.