Guest Column | Kremlin Connect

Kanwal Sibal

The international environment is changing, with new opportunities and challenges. India is not where it was since the early Nineties. Our economic growth, even if it has been less spectacular than that of China, has changed international perceptions about India as a trade and investment partner. Our developmental needs remain formidable and governments have to satisfy rising public expectations. On many global issues, whether related to climate change, clean energy, trade and investment issues, India’s role has become more prominent. Our foreign policy has to be aligned to these new realities, and a new balance in external relations has to be forged in a way that our interests are optimally advanced.

As a consequence, our relations with the West, especially the US, have acquired a new salience. This has given rise to a perception that under Prime Minster Narendra Modi we have neglected our relations with Russia. This would not be an objective view. Modi has launched a host of development campaigns, such as Make in India, Digital India, Skill India, Smart Cities, Start-Up India, Clean India, and the like. For implementing them his government has to reach out to the advanced industrialised countries for partnership, as the technological, management and even financial inputs can best be obtained from them. In the fields of health, renewable energy, clean coal technologies, solar power, we are again being pulled towards the West, as is the case with innovation as a whole. Education and people to people contacts also drive us towards the English-speaking West, rather than to Russia.

Prime Minister Modi on his arrival in Moscow

Russia has, however, its own place in our foreign policy, underpinned by elements that our other relationships, even as they grow stronger for pragmatic reasons, lack to the same degree. Our ties with Russia are based on trust, strong bonds of friendship that have stood the test of time, geo-political understanding, a sense of reliability, shared views on the conduct of international relations based on respect for sovereignty, non-interference in the internal affairs of countries, multilateralism and the like. These are elements to be valued. The Modi government, as the governments before, understands the importance of our ties with Russia, irrespective of minor irritants that crop up occasionally because of Russia’s hard-headed pursuit of its own interests that emphasise commercial advantage over any nostalgia of the past. We have also to maintain stability and trust in our ties with Russia at a time when its relations with the West have sharply deteriorated and have pushed it towards China.

The belief that contacts with Russia have slowed down with the Modi government would be misplaced. Modi has had occasion to meet Putin on a few occasions, at the BRICS, G-20 and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summits (the last on Russian soil). During the year, our President participated in the Moscow celebrations to mark the 70th Anniversary of Russia’s Victory in World War II. The Russian speaker has led a parliamentary delegation to India this year. Other important visits have been those of Russian deputy prime minister Rogozin, who is in charge of relations with India, and the Russian defence and interior ministers. On our side, our external affairs and defence ministers have visited Russia this year.

Modi visited Russia on December 24 for the 16th India-Russia summit. The regularity with which these summits have been held ever since Putin acceded to power testifies to the value the two countries attach to them as occasions to take stock of the relationship, assess on-going programmes, address issues, explore new areas of cooperation, all in a bid to keep cementing the relationship as well as building on it in all feasible areas.

Defence remains the most important pillar of our relationship with Russia. On the one hand, it provides an enduring base to our special and privileged strategic partnership; while on the other hand, it overloads the relationship in one area where any set-back is seen as a blow to the structure of the entire relationship. Our developing defence ties with the US, for instance, which have a logic of their own, are seen by Russia through the prism of its defence ties with us. We are also put in a position where we have to keep nurturing our ties with Russia with additional defence deals, even when problems relating to earlier ones are not fully resolved.

In his press comments in Moscow, Modi mentioned that we have made progress on a number of defence proposals that would boost defence manufacturing in India and our defence readiness with next generation equipment. He did not specify them, except the Inter-Governmental Agreement on m