We need you, we need you not

With his recent visits to Moscow and Beijing, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has completed perhaps the last of his summits with the ‘great’ powers. During his 10 years in office, India’s relations with Russia and China (as well as the US) have undergone important changes. And this is a good moment to take stock not just of the ties with Moscow and Beijing, but also of some persistent problems that limit the possibilities of these relations.

The course of these relationships is easily summarised. Russia’s strategic importance to India has relatively declined over the past decade.

To be sure, the political relationship has been nurtured by constant visits and interactions. But the strategic content of the ties has unmistakeably diminished. For one thing, the international context in which Indo-Russian ties were forged has completely changed.

In particular, the Cold War rivalry between Russia and China — that engendered close ties between Russia and India — no longer exists. On the contrary, Moscow and Beijing are now in a strategic entente.

For another, the defence relationship between Moscow and New Delhi — which was the centrepiece of the partnership — has been diluted. While Russia remains the major supplier and co-developer of weapons systems, India has looked elsewhere for big ticket purchases.

In contrast, the trend line of ties with China has been jagged. The Prime Minister inherited from his predecessor a much-needed political process for settlement of the boundary dispute. The high water mark of this process was agreement on the political parameters of 2005.

This agreement, it bears recalling, was inked against the backdrop of a steady deepening of ties between India and the US. Over the next couple of years, Beijing resiled from key points of this agreement.

Unclear reasons

The reasons for this remain unclear. But it appears that it was prompted by Beijing’s renewed concerns over Tibet, especially in the run-up to the Olympics. With the onset of the global financial crisis, which sharply underscored the relative rise of China, Beijing’s stance hardened further. There was a new swagger in its approach to territorial and maritime disputes.

With respect to India there were several assertions, both verbal and physical, of claims to disputed areas. In the past year, there have been indications that Beijing wants to lower the pitch of the problems with India.

Given the adverse reaction among Asian countries to China’s stance on a range of issues, it makes sense for Beijing to keep ties with India on an even keel. China has also taken note of tightening security ties between India and Japan.

But Beijing blows hot and cold. The new Chinese leadership has repeatedly emphasised the importance attached to ties with India, but there has also been a serious standoff along the disputed borders. It is tempting to assume that these are pieces of some grand Chinese design. It is more likely an indication of incoherence in China’s stance towards India.

In any event, it is clear that the strategic state of both these relationships is less than satisfactory. India can do better in leveraging and managing its ties with Russia and China. Three general problems stand out in a welter of specific issues: uneven economic linkages, uncertain political management, and unwillingness to seize wider opportunities.

No economic links

Perhaps the biggest drag on Indo-Russian relations is the absence of serious economic links. Bilateral trade stood at a paltry $11 billion in 2012. Despite repeated avowals, both sides have failed to promote any substantive set of investments. The fallout of the 2G case on Sistema has not helped.

The latest joint statement issued after the Prime Minister’s visit devotes no fewer than three longish paragraphs to trade and investment, but there isn’t much hope of progress any time soon. More progress has been made in the oil and gas sector, and both sides have agreed to explore the possibility of a pipeline.

This is strategically important, but it also reinforces the transactional, buyer-seller nature of the relationship.

With China, of course, the volume of trade has ballooned over the past few years to $66 billion in 2012. So has India’s trade deficit. And at this volume of trade, the imbalance of trade is fast becoming unsustainable for India.

This has figured prominently in the Prime Minister’s recent interactions with his new Chinese counterparts. The latter have acknowledged the skewed pattern of trade, but so far it not been redressed. Market access in China for Indian products and firms remains difficult.

For instance, China has held up import of rice from India for almost 15 years on the grounds that it is conducting phytosanitary tests. If the situation does not improve, New Delhi should consider introducing tit-for-tat non-tariff barriers on select Chinese imports — if only for the purpose of bargaining.

On the flip side, the government should do more to promote Chinese investment in India. The experience of a company like China Light and Power, which commissioned a 1320 MW power plant in Haryana in record time but has subsequently been pushed to the wall owing to lack of coal supplies, is hardly a sign that India wants Chinese investment.

Bilateral issues

This brings us to deficient domestic management of bilateral issues. India’s inability to conclude agreements with Russia for reactors 3 and 4 of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant is a case in point. The government has sent out differing messages on whether it wants to enforce the liability law for these reactors. It has also done little to promote domestic consensus on related questions of safety.

The government’s handling of the boundary issue with China has been marked with similar problems. The furore over so-called incursions by the Chinese is usually triggered by leaks from some government agency to the media. Yet New Delhi’s official position rightly remains that these are caused owing to differing perceptions about the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

The larger problem, however, is that the government has not done enough to shape public opinion on the facts of the case. So long as we perpetuate myths about a clear LAC or a historic boundary, there can be no settlement of the problem. The recent agreement on border defence cooperation is a welcome move. But ill-informed public discourse could hobble the effort to maintain a stable relationship with China.

Finally, New Delhi needs to leverage these relationships to further its strategic footprint and interests. Take the ongoing crisis in Syria. It is undeniable that New Delhi has major stakes in preventing this crisis from escalating and jeopardising the wider region.

Yet, after an initial foray with Brazil and South Africa, India has stepped back. Russia, however, has been keen for India to play a role in promoting a political settlement and has stated that India should be invited to the Geneva-2 process.

On Afghanistan, too, Russia and India have a convergence of views. More interestingly, China has opened a dialogue with India on Afghanistan. New Delhi apparently feels that nothing much is likely to come out of it.

This may be an underestimation both of Chinese concerns about developments in Afghanistan and their willingness to look beyond Pakistan. It remains to be seen whether New Delhi will seize these opportunities or continue to believe that passivity is the better part of prudence.

(The author is Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, and author of 1971: A Global History of Bangladesh.)

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