Uncertain Convictions - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 282

With the US, it has in recent years become an almost-partner (though not an ally), but
it is Washington, not Delhi, that drives the relationship or allows it to drift. With China,
which is its biggest and potentially most threatening neighbour, India is constantly on the
back foot and allows Beijing to set the agenda. With the Gulf states and the rest of West
Asia (broadly the Middle East), India only showed what some officials admit was 'benign
neglect' till the late 2000s. This was despite the presence there of some six million Indi-
ans who send home $35bn remittances annually, and the fact that the region supplies about
60 per cent of India's oil and gas. 13 The same applied to Southeast Asia. Elsewhere, In-
dia is beginning to take more notice of Africa (with $5bn three-year aid and other initiat-
ives announced in May 2011), the Gulf and eastern Asia, especially as it searches abroad
for sources of energy and other essential supplies, realizing the need to counter China's
growing international influence. It has also begun to develop an important relationship with
Japan that was marked by the first-ever visit to India by an emperor and empress at the end
of 2013. Japan is interested because it is attempting to counter aggressive diplomacy from
Beijing, and there are potentially big gains for India in terms of development finance and
other assistance.
India has always felt comfortable with the old Soviet Union, its ally in the Cold War;
Indira Gandhi and other top leaders used to say that Moscow 'has never let us down'. India
was directly affected when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990-91 because the econom-
ic support it had been receiving stopped. But the relationship has continued with Russia,
certainly on international affairs, though Moscow is uneasy about India's growing defence
and other links with the US, and there have been problems with Russian defence contract
delays and cost over-runs.
Formal links with Europe have not developed across a wide front since they were es-
tablished in 1963 with the then European Economic Community (EEC), though they were
given a boost in the 1990s and early 2000s. 14 India prefers to deal with individual countries
and does not rate the European Union as a top priority or vital entity 15 even though, taken
together, the countries involved are its major trading partner and it has been trying to ne-
gotiate a trade treaty. France is primarily seen as a useful and flexible supplier of defence
and nuclear equipment. The UK is treated as a friendly, once-significant but now over-
eager and occasionally condescending player. It is important at a business and people level
- there are 1.5m residents of Indian origin in the UK along with substantial investments, in-
cluding the Tata group, which is the largest private sector employer. Prime Minister David
Cameron hopes unrealistically for a 'very special partnership' and for the two countries to
be 'inextricably linked', as he spun it on a public relations-oriented trip to India. 16
Losing the Argument