Jade
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David Cameron says he has made it a priority to re-energise the flagging UK-India relationship. Given the shift in global economic power from west to east this is essential, but the prime minister may need to move fast. Worryingly, Britain is losing share of trade and foreign direct investment, as well as share of mind among opinion-formers, in a country that will be one of the pillars of a new multipolar order. In a decade, the UK has gone from being Indias fourth most important source of imports to the 18th largest last year.
Anglophile Indian policymakers of a certain age and Oxbridge pedigree have shown crushing indifference to the recent change in government in the former colonial overlord. The next generation of Indian leaders, with an educational and cultural tilt to the US, cares less. When working with a country where the average age is below 25, the UK cannot count on historical ties to sustain its relevance: Britishness is a currency of depreciating value.
But the new coalition government needs to give meaning to its commitment to an enhanced partnership with India. With Mondays visit to London of a high-ranking delegation of senior Indian businesspeople and politicians, there is an opportunity for change. But if the coalition fails now to deliver a new approach, New Delhi will zone out.
What might this be? Professor Rahul Roy-Chaudhury of the International Institute for Strategic Studies notes how the US found a gamechanger with a groundbreaking civil nuclear deal that in 2008 ended Indias pariah status on the issue after decades of isolation. The UK, by contrast, is struggling to differentiate itself from dozens of mid-sized countries seeking a strategic relationship.
Endless repetition of British support for Indian membership of the United Nations Security Council leaves New Delhi unmoved, as do professions of readiness to reform the governance of the global financial architecture. Moves to build on existing co-operation in counter-terrorism and defence, to relax insulting visa regimes or to stop talking about Kashmir would all help, but will not fire imaginations. Unless there develops strong personal chemistry between prime ministers, formalising an annual strategic dialogue, as Prof Roy-Chaudhury proposes, risks being meaningless.
Such leverage as the UK has is undermined by the fragmentation of its diplomatic and commercial representation and a poorly integrated approach to international policy. The UK-India Business Council and UK Trade and Investment overlap, for example. Rival parliamentary groups also divide the limited bandwidth of the Indian establishment.
Mr Cameron can do things better. One obvious step is to emulate the US model of actively seeking to attract Indian entrepreneurs to the country, building on the UKs inbuilt advantage of a substantial South Asian diaspora. This would allow the UK to tap into Indian rates of growth the likes of which it can only envy. Another signal of intent would be to appoint a high-profile veteran business figure as a special envoy.
Nowhere is the need to bring this relationship up to date more obvious than in aid. Counter-intuitively, one of the first decisions should be for the Department for International Development, already curtailing aid to China and Russia and promising greater value for taxpayer money, to scale back its substantial India programme. This is, still, the aid agencys single largest country programme, worth £825m over the three years to 2011 greater than it has been at any point in 20 years.
Defenders of the aid programme can legitimately argue that progress towards the Millennium Development Goals hinges on India. But India can now fund its own development needs, considerable though they are in a country with 450m poor. It has a defence budget of $31.5bn, plans for a prestige-boosting moon-shot and a substantial foreign aid programme of its own. India is not China; but as a claimant to a permanent Security Council seat and a place at the top table of world affairs, it is also no longer a natural aid recipient.
The moral arguments might be finely balanced, but common sense suggests it is a better idea for the UK to prioritise aid to countries that cannot afford to fund their development over those that take the money because it is going free. Many other donors have in recent years either been kicked out of India for being too small or, like the US, whose aid flows peaked in 1960, stated they are walking the last mile in India. The UK accounts for almost 30 per cent of all foreign aid to India. A bit of tough love in the new special relationship should end this anachronism.
---------- Post added at 02:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:02 PM ----------
The article as been published in yesterdays FT. Another example of Indias growing stature
Anglophile Indian policymakers of a certain age and Oxbridge pedigree have shown crushing indifference to the recent change in government in the former colonial overlord. The next generation of Indian leaders, with an educational and cultural tilt to the US, cares less. When working with a country where the average age is below 25, the UK cannot count on historical ties to sustain its relevance: Britishness is a currency of depreciating value.
But the new coalition government needs to give meaning to its commitment to an enhanced partnership with India. With Mondays visit to London of a high-ranking delegation of senior Indian businesspeople and politicians, there is an opportunity for change. But if the coalition fails now to deliver a new approach, New Delhi will zone out.
What might this be? Professor Rahul Roy-Chaudhury of the International Institute for Strategic Studies notes how the US found a gamechanger with a groundbreaking civil nuclear deal that in 2008 ended Indias pariah status on the issue after decades of isolation. The UK, by contrast, is struggling to differentiate itself from dozens of mid-sized countries seeking a strategic relationship.
Endless repetition of British support for Indian membership of the United Nations Security Council leaves New Delhi unmoved, as do professions of readiness to reform the governance of the global financial architecture. Moves to build on existing co-operation in counter-terrorism and defence, to relax insulting visa regimes or to stop talking about Kashmir would all help, but will not fire imaginations. Unless there develops strong personal chemistry between prime ministers, formalising an annual strategic dialogue, as Prof Roy-Chaudhury proposes, risks being meaningless.
Such leverage as the UK has is undermined by the fragmentation of its diplomatic and commercial representation and a poorly integrated approach to international policy. The UK-India Business Council and UK Trade and Investment overlap, for example. Rival parliamentary groups also divide the limited bandwidth of the Indian establishment.
Mr Cameron can do things better. One obvious step is to emulate the US model of actively seeking to attract Indian entrepreneurs to the country, building on the UKs inbuilt advantage of a substantial South Asian diaspora. This would allow the UK to tap into Indian rates of growth the likes of which it can only envy. Another signal of intent would be to appoint a high-profile veteran business figure as a special envoy.
Nowhere is the need to bring this relationship up to date more obvious than in aid. Counter-intuitively, one of the first decisions should be for the Department for International Development, already curtailing aid to China and Russia and promising greater value for taxpayer money, to scale back its substantial India programme. This is, still, the aid agencys single largest country programme, worth £825m over the three years to 2011 greater than it has been at any point in 20 years.
Defenders of the aid programme can legitimately argue that progress towards the Millennium Development Goals hinges on India. But India can now fund its own development needs, considerable though they are in a country with 450m poor. It has a defence budget of $31.5bn, plans for a prestige-boosting moon-shot and a substantial foreign aid programme of its own. India is not China; but as a claimant to a permanent Security Council seat and a place at the top table of world affairs, it is also no longer a natural aid recipient.
The moral arguments might be finely balanced, but common sense suggests it is a better idea for the UK to prioritise aid to countries that cannot afford to fund their development over those that take the money because it is going free. Many other donors have in recent years either been kicked out of India for being too small or, like the US, whose aid flows peaked in 1960, stated they are walking the last mile in India. The UK accounts for almost 30 per cent of all foreign aid to India. A bit of tough love in the new special relationship should end this anachronism.
---------- Post added at 02:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:02 PM ----------
The article as been published in yesterdays FT. Another example of Indias growing stature
