Earthbound relations

Indian-Russia trade needs to expand beyond traditional sectors of engagement: defence and space.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s whirlwind visit to Russia has emphasised the prominent position given to Moscow in New Delhi’s foreign policy outlook. The traditional position that Russia has enjoyed as a major defence and technical partner would, the prime minister said during his visit, be enhanced with moves towards stronger economic co-operation. “Our trade and commercial cooperation needs to become more contemporary and reflective of our capacities,” he told Russian journalists. In meetings, the two sides agreed that the amount of bilateral trade should increase to $20 billion by 2015, and the sectors in which trade took place should be diversified.

Five agreements were signed, including one to produce 42 more Sukhoi jets for the Indian defence forces. This followed an agreement that India’s missile systems will receive signals from the Russian Federation’s positioning satellite network, called Glonass. The standard method of satellite-based navigation, the ubiquitous Global Positioning System or GPS, is controlled by the US navy. Using an alternative system is a careful reminder that India’s security infrastructure needs to be broad-based and widely networked. The space and defence sectors have, of course, been the points where Indo-Russian co-operation survived the fall of the Soviet Union and the implosion of the former Communist state’s economy in the 1990s. Vladimir Putin has rebuilt the economy through leveraging its hydrocarbon and energy wealth — and thus the main focus of this trip by India’s prime minister was on co-operation over energy issues, with India offering to provide technical assistance to Russia on the safe management of fly ash from thermal power plants. Bilateral relations between energy-hungry India and energy-rich Russia clearly have space to grow in this sector in particular.

Energised by the trip, Dr Singh was uncharacteristically blunt about the delays to the Koodankulam nuclear plant in Tamil Nadu, which is being built with Russian assistance. He pointed out that Tamil Nadu was an energy-deficit state, hoping that it would soon recognise the value of adding to India’s power production. The opposition to the reactor, co-ordinated by a motley crew of free-floating radicals, was “overdone”, he insisted. The project has already received Rs 14,000 crore worth of investment, but its commissioning and expansion have been held up by protests; the Centre has failed to reassure protesters sufficiently that the technology with which the plant is endowed is advanced enough to ensure that natural disasters like tsunamis will not affect its safe operation. This is another pointer to the sad fact that the forward-looking dynamism that the United Progressive Alliance frequently displays in its external diplomacy is not matched by the skill with which it conducts its internal diplomacy.