MOSCOW, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Russia and India have made tangible progress in talks on plans to jointly produce military equipment, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday, after talks with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Moscow.
First there are the basics of linguistics since the British and India have a bit of shared history but that has certainly helped India to integrate itself into the western business environment. There are now huge numbers of western countries leveraging outsourcing for business resources and if India keeps distancing itself from the West, those integrations will start to look more like liabilities to western businesses. Next, I can’t imagine that the business opportunities with Russia can rival North American plus the EU so it seems odd to align with Russia when it could jeopardize a very beneficial relationship for India. Finally, due to immigration, there are large populations from India across the entire western hemisphere, I would think that would drive solidarity with the west. I know little about India so maybe those points are not accurate but those are my interpretations.
India is not distancing itself from West, but geopolitics are different for India. West has not been a reliable trading partner in last 8 decades, last decade West has been reliable but that’s mostly because now they want to counter China. USSR/Russia has been more reliable.
But if you take a subset of defense trading partner, West has been very unreliable period. If you look at all the corruption scandals in Indian Defense history you’d realise almost all are with the west, France, Sweden, Italy.
Now going back to broader business and economic development, your argument is probably valid, but from the point of view of India, it is in position of most relative strength in geopolitics than it has ever been, if India can play both sides, it will and it must.
If any dealings with Russia were followed by sanction from the west, I think that’s when you’d see who does India favor more. But west won’t do it, because West needs India to be strong to counter China and if the cost is delayed fall of Putin, I think west is willing to take that risk, since Russia is no longer the threat it was to the west 3 decades ago.
So, from Indian’s point of view if it can both have a cake and eat it too, why would it not?