Put in more

The India-Russia relationship is like a stable marriage

It has been said before but is worth repeating. The India-Russia bilateral relationship is like a good, stable marriage — lots of substance, not much excitement! The India-US relationship used to be the exact opposite, like a stormy affair, lots of excitement, very little substance. Things are changing. There is much greater substance to the India-US relationship today — at all the three levels that matter in a bilateral relationship: people-to-people (P-2-P), business-to-business (B-2-B) and government-to-government. The recent visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin showed very clearly that the government-to-government relationship is robust and doing well, but there is still not enough of a P-2-P and a B-2-B relationship worth talking about. Things are improving a bit on the B-2-B front, as reported from time to time in the columns of this newspaper, with more Indian companies doing business in Russia and the other way round. Here too, if things have to take off, Russia must have a more liberal business visa policy, and it must create mechanisms that help Indian businessmen deal with Russia’s oligarchs and business mafia.

The only important P-2-P stuff seems to be happening in Goa, where a Russian tourist ghetto of sorts has been created. But the two countries need to do more on a wider front than is the case today. As an economy that is endowed with resources and technology but not enough people, Russia should have a more liberal immigration policy and it should encourage Indians to invest there. The defence relationship remains, however, the mainstay of the bilateral relationship. It has been revived by the Indian decision to buy the aircraft carrier Gorshkov. Russia remains a trusted and reliable strategic partner. Apart from defence, it has also helped India in other fields such as nuclear energy and space. But the elites in Moscow and Mumbai need to take a closer look at each other and at potential opportunities for a closer relationship if the magic of the old days has to be revived.

The regular interaction between Mr Putin and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reintroduced personal warmth into this equation at the highest level, echoing the days of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. But India and Russia have far too many shared interests and complementarities for this relationship to continue to be defined largely by high-level visits and defence deals. A new generation of Indians and Russians must interact with each other so that old stereotypes symbolised by Raj Kapoor songs and cheap Soviet books are replaced by more contemporary and forward-looking metaphors.