India, Russia negotiate new equations

The foreign office and media have been patting themselves on the back that heads of state and government of the permanent members of UN Security Council, also known as P5, have made trips to Delhi this year. It started with British prime minister David Cameron’s visit in January and ended with that of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday.

There is, perhaps, some justification in the sense of gratification that India is being wooed by the ostensibly VIP nations of the world. But there is a need to get back to the brass tacks of India’s equation with these countries. It is immature to be content with the assurances the leaders of these five countries have given of supporting India’s claim to permanent membership of the UN Security Council.

There is a tendency to see India’s relationship with Russia in the light of India-Soviet Union relations of 70s and 80s. It is true that it was the most valuable relationship in the Cold War era and India should indeed remember it fondly. But the two countries have changed inexorably since 1991. Russia has emerged from the ashes of the communist state and India has transformed itself from a closed to an open economy. In the last 10 years, the attempt on both sides has been to try to forge a new equation in the changed context. The relationship has not yet settled into the new groove.

The defence, space programmes, and civil nuclear power sectors — which have been the traditional contact points — are now being negotiated from new vantage points. Commercial imperatives score over strategic and ideological ones. There is need for hard-nosed realism in assessing India-Russia relations. Though Soviet Union had used its veto power in the Security Council in India’s favour, especially in case of Jammu and Kashmir, Russia will decide afresh what it wants to do. India, too, is looking at other options, especially the US, in the defence and space sectors.

More importantly, Russia will be forced to take a new line on the Af-Pak question, where the Western forces are having second thoughts about the war. This could bring back Russia into the region but it will be very different from the Soviet intervention in 1978-9.

Russia may be inclined to work closely with Pakistan in dealing with Afghanistan and New Delhi should be prepared to accept this new situation. Strategy pundits in New Delhi will have to understand that the decades-old friendship between the two countries is mutating into a different one altogether.