Indo-Russian ties set to ascend new heights in coming years

Vinay Shukla

Moscow, Dec 26 (PTI) Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev's maiden visit to India appears to be a new signal by
Moscow to give a fresh start to Indo-Russian bilateral ties,
which in 2008 lost past bonhomie and sheen apparently due to
India's growing closeness to the US.

In spite of the officials of the two nations putting
up a brave face, trade figures make it clear that without a
vibrant economic dimension and business-to-business contacts,
the bilateral relations are leading nowhere.

It is not only that traditional Indo-Russian
four-decade strong close relationship is threatened, but
question marks looms even on the extremely close defence and
security ties.

The lack in warmth in bilateral ties is being
attributed to Moscow being wary to warming up of New Delhi to
Washington after the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal and Russian
leaders being engrossed in their own internal power
configurations.

A sudden windfall foreign exchange income from the
Siberian oil fields triggered by the massive soaring of oil
prices, also contributed to the crisis, as it made the Kremlin
leaders look more westwards.

As Washington and New Delhi appeared to be moving
closer, the Russian-US ties on the other hand deteriorated
over their confrontation on Moscow's intervention in Georgia.
US plans to deploy anti-missile shield in Poland and Czech
Republic, which the Kremlin sees as a threat to its second
strike capability.

It was against this bleak backdrop, Medvedev made his
maiden India visit, which was the first by any world leader
after the Mumbai carnage.

The Russian President came with an apparent resolve to
infuse a new blood to the Indo-Russian relationship in a
background of two countries having emerged as global players
in the economic field.

The green signal for putting the bilateral
relationship on more business-to-business interface and giving
it an economic dimension has been pushed by Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin.

Though Putin faced constitutional limitations after
taking over as the Prime Minister, he emerged as powerful as
Nikita Khrushchev was in the Soviet era combining the post of
the ruling party leader and the cabinet chief.

Putin had revived the bilateral relations and lifted
them to the level of strategic partnership in 2000. Many of
his ideas, including investment of rupee debt in hi-tech
projects, could be materialised only after he took over the
premiership.

The year 2008 opened up new avenues and it now up to
the two countries to materialise them by involving new actors
like private business and entrepreneurs, who look beyond the
buyer-seller relations and focus on capacity building through
investments.

Though so far ONGC remains the sole Indian entity to
have invested in Russia, there is a move by Medvedev and Putin
to invite more Indian businessmen to invest in the country on
the pattern of Tatas and Birlas and others going on
company-buying spree in West Europe and China.

The defence cooperation still remains the pivot of
Indo-Russian relationship, with New Delhi investing billions
of dollars in joint projects to build futuristic fighter
aircraft, warships, submarines and missiles.

But problems still remain as the Indian armed forces
are peeved at the delay in delivery schedules of weapon
systems and quality of spares of frontline Russian armaments
used by the security force.

But now efforts are on both by Moscow and New Delhi to
forge joint ventures to build new hi-tech weapons with almost
50-50 investment sharing.

The relationships will get a further boost as 'Year of
India' is to be organised in Russia next year which is
expected to impact on the Russian society, underlining a new
and confident India. PTI AKD
DEP