Congress blames strained Modi-Trump ties for India’s absence from Pax Silica, a US-led initiative aimed at countering Chinese language tech dominance.
NEW DELHI: The Indian Nationwide Congress celebration has sharply criticised Top Minister Narendra Modi, sustaining that it is “not very surprising” that India has been excluded from a brand contemporary initiative led by the US, is named Pax Silica. Congress officials attribute this exclusion to a prime decline in the relationship between Modi and frail US President Donald Trump.
This commentary follows experiences suggesting that India is now not segment of Pax Silica, a nine-nation initiative designed to diminish China’s impact over crucial excessive-tech and semiconductor provide chains. The initiative targets to advertise cooperation among allied international locations to procure their know-how provide chains.
Congress typical secretary for communications, Jairam Ramesh, expressed his views on social media platform X, declaring, “According to various news reports, the US has excluded India from a nine-nation initiative launched to mitigate Chinese control over high-tech supply chains. The agreement is termed Pax Silica, in clear reference to Pax Sinica, which denotes China’s dominance in global supply chains.”
The international locations currently occupied with this initiative are the US, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia. Ramesh further remarked, “Given the significant downturn in Trump-Modi relations since May 10, 2025, it is perhaps unsurprising that India has not been included. It would have undoubtedly been to our advantage to be part of this group.”
These feedback emerged at the moment after a cell phone dialog between Top Minister Modi and Trump, for the period of which they mentioned the significance of sustaining bilateral economic family. Ramesh took the chance to criticise Modi, noting the timing of the news referring to India’s exclusion came neutral a day after Modi had printed a submit celebrating his cell phone call with Trump, whom he had previously regarded as a terminate ally.
The contemporary call coincided with the conclusion of two days of discussions between India and the US referring to a proposed alternate agreement that could alleviate the 50% tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Indian items. Modi characterised the dialog as “warm and engaging” in a social media replace, although he did now not level out the alternate negotiations.
What is Pax Silica?
In conserving with the US Issue Division, “Pax Silica is the Department of State’s flagship initiative focused on artificial intelligence and supply chain security, promoting a new economic security consensus among allies and trusted partners.” The time period “Pax” historically signifies peace, balance, and prosperity, and is utilized to the foundations of well-liked synthetic intelligence and computing.
This US-led initiative seeks to build a procure and resilient know-how ecosystem, bettering innovation all over the full worth chain from crucial minerals and vitality to superior manufacturing, semiconductors, synthetic intelligence infrastructure, and logistics.
The major objectives of Pax Silica encompass reducing coercive dependencies, holding materials and capabilities needed to synthetic intelligence, and helping aligned international locations in establishing and deploying superior technologies at scale. It targets to collaborate with international locations that host superior know-how corporations to liberate the economic most likely of the AI period and to catch a sustainable economic repeat that fosters AI-pushed prosperity all over partner international locations.
In parallel, India is making ready to host the India-AI Impact Summit 2026, scheduled for February 19-20. This summit will centre all over the issues of “People, Planet, and Progress.” PM Modi announced this match at the France AI Motion Summit, marking it because the inaugural world AI summit hosted in the International South.
