Type: op-ed snap

Context

• The presidency, which India has recently assumed for the period between 1 December 2022 and 30 November 2023, will likely open more avenues for cooperation on multiple fronts with countries like Saudi Arabia, a key Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) country, also a member state of G20.

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India-Saudi Arabia Relationship

• Fourth largest trading partner: Since the last few years, India-Saudi Arabia relations have become comprehensive and robust, with the kingdom not only becoming New Delhi’s fourth largest trading partner but also an important collaborator in the joint combat against all forms of terrorism, money laundering, and terror financing.
• 18% of India’s energy Imports: It is noteworthy that the bilateral trade in the fiscal year 2021-2022 stood at US$42.8 billion, and the kingdom alone accounts for 18 percent of India’s energy import, which reflects the significance of the country from the standpoint of New Delhi’s energy and economic security calculus.
• Collaboration on defence corridor: Simultaneously, military-security and defence cooperation have also gained momentum, which has been triggered by a certain commonality of security threats and challenges, and the interests of the respective governments to collaborate in the defence industrial sector (within the ambit of their military modernisation programmes).
• Non-oil areas of cooperation: The ties between the two countries, now, are not only concentrated on the oil-energy trade alone (as it has been the pattern) but both sides have started to explore the possibilities of working together on domains such as renewable energy, climate change, healthcare, food security, education, technology, etc.

Partnership in Green and clean energy

• Collaboration with Indian companies: In November 2020, Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, called on foreign investors to “invest on their own” or to collaborate with Indian companies in the country’s green energy sector.
• Reducing dependency on hydrocarbon: Similarly, Saudi Arabia, striving to reduce its dependency on a hydrocarbon-based economy, is investing in the same sector.
• Saudi Vision 2030 programme: In line with its Saudi Vision 2030 programme, it launched (in 2021) the Saudi Green Initiative which works on “increasing Saudi Arabia’s reliance on clean energy, offsetting emissions, and protecting the environment.
• Ambitious targets by both country: Riyadh, ushering in a new era of energy diplomacy, is building partnerships with countries that have similar ambitions. This, to a great extent, has facilitated the need to expand cooperation with India in the renewable energy sphere. While the Indian government works towards generating 450 Gigawatt about 60 percent of electricity using renewable and clean sources, Saudi Arabia also aims at about 50 per cent, both to be achieved by the year 2030.

India-Saudi Arabia cooperation in health sector and during Covid19

• Cooperation with west Asia region: India has stepped up its healthcare-related engagements with the wider West Asian region, and, particularly in matters related to the production of vaccines, joint medical researches, exchange of best-fit practices, and so on.
• Healthcare professionals to Saudi Arabia: During the peak of the aforementioned pandemic, the Indian government assisted its Saudi counterpart in their fight against this outbreak, mainly by dispatching hundreds of Indian healthcare professionals.
• Vaccine acceptancy: Saudi Arabia was also one of the few countries that recognised “Serum Institute of India’s Covishield as an approved COVID-19 vaccine” for any travellers who wanted to enter the kingdom.
• MoU on health and medical products: Now, what could act as a catalyst in elevating the interactions from the existing level is the Indo-Saudi Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on health and medical products regulations that were signed during the 2019 visit of Modi to Riyadh.

Cooperation in Food Security

• Investment by Saudi and UAE: It could be noted that, in 2019, to act as a safeguard from any food insecurity, UAE and Saudi Arabia GCC states decided to invest in India’s organic and food processing industries.
• Win-win situation in food cooperation: With India’s expertise in the field of crop production and overall agricultural activities, and also being a net exporter of agricultural commodities (especially rice), strengthening of partnerships could prove to be highly beneficial for the populace of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and other GCC countries that continue to depend on external sources for their food security, mostly owing to the lack of fertile soil.

Conclusion

• While India-Saudi Arabia ties are expected to grow further, there also exists a potential for collaboration beyond this bilateral engagement. This is precisely because, in the emerging international order, there is also a growing call for a collective response to the multidimensional crises the world is facing today.

Mains Question

Q. Briefly describe the India-Saudi Arabia relationship? How both countries are collaborating on clean energy and food security?

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Context

• Russia marks two anniversaries the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union and the 31st anniversary of its dissolution. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, the Soviet Union was proclaimed on December 30, 1922. Until its dissolution on December 26, 1991.

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How India looks at Russia?

• Special Strategic Partner: Vladimir Putin’s Russia continues to be valued as the heir to the Soviet Union and as a special strategic partner.
• Ukraine war has not affected the ties: Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and his brutal bombing of its civilian population, which Moscow claims is an integral part of Russia, has hardly made a dent in the way the Indian political classes think about the crisis.
• Russia as anti-imperialist: On the left and centre of the Indian political spectrum, the Soviet Union has been viewed purely through the ideological lens of progressive politics nationalist, internationalist, communist and anti-imperialist. That lens, however, is detached from the history of Russia and the continuing struggles for its political soul.
• Russia as best friend forever: Within the strategic community, the conviction that Russia is India’s “best friend forever” leaves little room for a nuanced view of Russia’s domestic and international politics.

Understanding Russia’s behaviour through Russian History

• The Bolshevik Revolution: It is initially sought to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church, eventually leveraged it in the deification of the Soviet state and lent a religious colour to the claim of Russian exceptionalism.
• Alliance with orthodoxy: Putin has taken the alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church to a higher level. For the Russian nationalists today, the effort to take back Ukraine is a “holy war”.
• Limited sovereignty to other communist state: After the Second World War, Soviet Russia insisted that fellow communist states had only “limited sovereignty” and Moscow had the right to intervene to keep them on the straight and narrow path of socialism and prevent their destabilisation. The military invasions in Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979) were motivated by this impulse.
• Russia has not given up Imperialist tradition: In claiming that Ukraine has no sovereignty of its own, Putin is merely following that imperial tradition as well as the conviction that Ukraine, Belarus and Russian-speaking people everywhere are part of the “Russkiy Mir” or the “Russian world”.
• Mao’s characterization of Russia: After he broke from the Russian communists, Mao began to characterise Russia as an “imperial power”. Mao had not forgotten the persistent tension between the Chinese and Russian empires.

Analyzing Russia’s internal politics

• Weak federalism by Lenin: The founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin warned against the dangers of “great Russian chauvinism”. He insisted on structuring a federal polity with the right of various nationalities to secede.
• Strong soviet by Stalin: Stalin, however, turned Russian federalism into a hollow shell and erased the difference between the “Soviet Union” and “Soviet Russia”.
• Putin refuse to recognize Ukraine: Putin denounced Lenin for giving a separate identity to Ukraine. “Modern Ukraine”, Putin said, “can with good reason be called ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine’.”
• Stalling the democratic process: The enduring autocratic impulse in Moscow that is rooted in the stalled democratic revolution. Traditionally, the Russian fear of disorder has left the population to put great faith in strong leaders.
• Centralising tendency: The frequent but unsuccessful efforts at political liberalisation have left a fertile ground in Russia for centralising power under leaders like Putin and increasing the chances of grave miscalculation.

What should be the India’s approach towards Russia?

• Not directly criticize Russia: Although it has been reluctant to directly criticise Russian aggression, official India is not blind to the fact that Putin’s “special military operation” has gone horribly wrong.
• Taking note of changing world order: India will inevitably find ways to adjust to the tectonic shifts in the world order triggered by Putin’s misadventure.
• Learning from Putin’s mistake: The Indian political and strategic communities must come to terms with the many complex factors that have contributed to Putin’s egregious errors in Ukraine.

Conclusion

• To understand how the war in Ukraine might play out and its longer-term consequences for India, India’s discourse must pay greater attention to the turbulent history of Russia and its troubled relations with its Central European neighbours.