Trade smooths way for France to restore ties with Narendra Modi

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/21/narendra-modi-india-france-trade-relations

Version 0 of 1.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to France – his first to a European country – has put the seal on normalised relations between the two countries. Before his election in May 2014 the French diplomatic service had shunned Modi because of his alleged part in clashes between Hindus and Muslims that claimed about 2,000 lives in 2002, when he was chief minister of Gujarat state.

Modi arrived in France earlier this month, before travelling to Germany, joining Chancellor Angela Merkel for the opening of the Hanover trade fair. His programme in Paris started with a military parade at Les Invalides. France’s change of tack has partly been dictated by the priorities of trade diplomacy, in particular the sale of 36 Rafale fighters and the supply of six EPR nuclear reactors built by Areva.

Modi must remember that, when India carried out a series of underground nuclear tests in 1998, France vetoed sanctions by the UN security council and endorsed India’s application to join the select Nuclear Suppliers Group, which monitors exports of such goods and services to prevent proliferation.

Maritime cooperation in the Indian ocean could open new vistas for the partnership between the two countries

After Les Invalides, President François Hollande took his guest for a cruise along the Seine to establish closer ties. Though this was obviously a good opportunity to show off their newfound friendship to the media, the two leaders had plenty of other topics to discuss.

As the Indian premier pointed out in a message posted in March on Facebook, France is India’s most important partner in space. There are “huge opportunities for collaboration in the manufacturing and infrastructure with France, including in the railways sector”, he added.

Modi went to Toulouse, in south-western France, to visit the headquarters of the French Space Agency (Cnes) and to celebrate cooperation between the two nations, which has already yielded the Megha-Tropiques satellite for studying the water cycle and energy exchange in the tropical atmosphere.

He went on to neighbouring Airbus, which has several plants in India. There his concern was to promote the Make in India programme, designed to attract foreign investment in industry. “Maritime cooperation in the Indian ocean could open new vistas for the partnership between the two countries,” says Rakesh Sood, India’s former ambassador to France.

With India keen to reassert itself in an ocean threatened by Chinese expansion, it could benefit from closer cooperation with France, which operates naval bases at Djibouti and on Réunion, using data collected by their radar stations. Modi ended his stay in France at Neuve Chapelle, west of Lille, with a tribute to the 9,000 Indian soldiers who lost their lives during the first world war.

In just over 48 hours the Indian premier touched on the past, present and future of his country’s relations with France. It is just a pity that this trip should come so late, but for Modi the priority was to establish closer links with neighbours in south-east Asia, where the overall climate seems particularly unstable, and Asia-Pacific, the global economy’s new centre of gravity. So he has visited Australia, Japan, Singapore and the US. In the meantime he has updated India’s Look East Policy, originally hatched in the late 1990s, rebranding it as Act East, to emphasise the importance of the region. India is determined to bring its growth into line with that of Asia as a whole, but to do so it needs European technology and investments.

Despite initial plans for an India-EU summit, Modi’s European tour did not include Brussels. Delhi explained that time was short, but it seems that the authorities in the Indian capital were irritated by the EU’s lack of enthusiasm. This was yet another missed opportunity for two giants which tend to ignore one another, despite having so much to share. The EU is India’s leading trading partner, yet talks on a bilateral free trade and investment agreement are still in deadlock.

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde