Jayanth Jacob  

Next Monday in Sochi, the Russian city on the Black Sea, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet President Vladimir Putin in an informal summit to take stock of bilateral ties, devise ways strengthen the relationship and coordinate their positions on fast-paced regional and global developments. The informal summit comes as a surprise. There, perhaps, lies its importance as well. Russia is the only country other than Japan with which India holds an annual summit . The two countries have held 17 such meetings so far. The Indian Prime Minister and Russian President also meet at least three times a year on the sidelines of the summits of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping and the Group of 20 (G20) .

The informal summit amounts to an admission that the two sides have realised their relationship can no longer be driven by the same nostalgia, and familiar templates of military and nuclear cooperation that have characterised ties in the past.

Russia has been complaining that India has made no major military purchase from it in the past four years. For the Russians, India’s diversification in defence purchases, especially in buying from the US, has remained a cause of concern. Meanwhile, Russia has also started looking around for new partners. Though it’s not yet a matter of grave strategic consequences, Russia- Pakistan interactions are a cause of discomfiture to India. The informal summit will give Modi and Putin an opportunity to take stock of their ties and discuss how they will work together, unburdened by any pre-negotiated outcome documents and joint declaration.

Significance

Moscow has been a time tested friend of India. Russia stood by India in the 1962 war against communist China, in two wars with Pakistan thereafter and refused to join sanctions imposed against New Delhi after it conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998.It remained a steady supplier of arms to India and helped the country on the path of industrialisation.

India and Russia have an institutionalised structure in place to oversee military technical cooperation. The India-russia Inter-governmental Commission on Military Tec- hnical Cooperation (IRIGC-MTC) is at the apex of this structure. The two defence ministers meet annually, alternately in Russia and India, to discuss and review the status of ongoing projects and other issues of military technical cooperation. There are two working groups and seven sub-groups under the IRIGC-MTC that review and discuss an array of military technical issues.the summit will take forward discussions on the trajectory of the relationship.

India needs to diversify its military purchases to reduce reliance on Russian military hardware -- that’s a view that has taken shape over the past two decades . Beyond defence, ongoing nuclear cooperation and modest energy ties, there is little hat could drive the relationship. Barring very few, Indian companies are enthused about investing in Russia. Trade is modest too. For example, In 1990, the Soviet Union was India’s top destination for merchandise goods, accounting for exports to the tune of $2.9 billion. In 2015, the figure wass $4.5 billion, but the difference is that Russia is just one among 25 odd countries to which India exports goods worth that much. So, observers argue, a relationship primarily driven by military purchase wouldn’t sustain the momentum of Indorussian ties for very long. In other words, Russia’s struggling economy has very little to offer to New Delhi in the medium -and long-term.

Those who oppose this view cite a historical fact. That is, unlike the US, Russia became a military superpower without becoming an economic superpower.defence manufacturing still drives the Russian economy a great deal, and India needs to build on existing cooperation in the defence and nuclear sectors. The government has already moved in this direction through defence co-production under the ‘Make in India’ programme. With the US, under President Donald Trump showing its disdain for multilaterlism and the intention of engaging less with the region, India needs to look for other options. Russia still has the clout to help India in its bid to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group and become a permanent member of the United Stations Security Council.

The Modi-Putin informal summit marks the ascendance of the second view in India’s foreign policy debate.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times -17 May 2018