Opinion - Editorials   

India and Russia

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can reckon his 28-hour visit to Moscow for the eighth annual summit an Indian head of government has had with President Vladimir Putin since Russia’s strong and highly popular leader initiated these meetings in 2000 to be the United Progressive Alliance government’s most significant foreign policy accomplishment so far this year. That the visit was preceded by some intimations of mild discord over where India stood in the world might have actually helped the two sides avoid complacency and work earnestly to restore a shared sense that “ours is a strategic partnership that has stood the test of time,” to quote Dr. Singh. Aside from the unanimity or near-unanimity on all issues of mutual interest claimed on both sides, much satisfaction can be taken from the resolution of the seemingly intractable issue of the utilisation of the rupee debt fund, which has swelled to Rs.8000 crore. Agreements for the co-development and co-production of a multirole transport aircraft, involving an investment of $600 million to be made on a 50:50 basis, and a fifth generation fighter underscored defence cooperation as a bedrock of the India-Russia relationship, for the past, present, and future. After all, at a time when Indian foreign policy has veered westward and across the Atlantic, this reality check is in order: “over 50 per cent of the equipment used by Indian armed forces today is of Russian/Soviet origin,” as National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan pointed out in a recent interview.

There has been longstanding dissatisfaction over the stagnant level of bilateral trade and investment relations. For two-way trade, a target of $10 billion has been set for 2010 (from the current level of $3 billion); this must be a world record for unambitious targets set for trade between two trillion dollar economies. During this visit, Dr. Singh, the economist, made a game attempt to enthuse a meeting of Russian and Indian businesspersons to do something serious about changing the reality of bilateral trade and investment relations lagging “far behind our excellent political understanding and our joint commitment to strategic partnership.” It is anyone’s guess whether the labours of the Indo-Russian Joint Study Group and the Joint Task Force are going to make a major difference. The visit’s real disappointment came in the area of civilian nuclear cooperation: as The Hindu’s insightful Russia Correspondent, Vladimir Radyuhin, has revealed, the two governments have not exactly been on the same wavelength in recent weeks in taking forward the January 2007 Memorandum of Intent providing for the construction of four additional reactors at Koodankulam and, in fact, more Russian design reactors at “new sites in India.” According to Russian official sources, an intergovernmental agreement, presumably on a par with India’s 123 agreement with the United States, was “fully prepared for signature during the summit” but the Indian side backed out at the last minute. The whys, wherefores, and political implications of this negativism — at a sensitive juncture — in dealing with the only country currently involved in civilian nuclear cooperation with India deserve separate editorial analysis.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

India and Russia
Prisoners and mental health
Blaming it on the judiciary in Pakistan
Maharashtra: ‘graveyard of farmers’
Needed, a code of child rights
Developing Africa’s science and research base
Corrections and clarifications
Traumatised Pakistan
Nandigram issue
Hasty approval

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu