What India Gains From Revitalised Ties

Context: India’s May 4 virtual summit with the UK is seen as a breakthrough agreement under the Roadmap-2030.

Intensifying India-UK relationship:

• Defence and security: Readiness of the UK to provide defence technology, share intelligence and participation in the Information Fusion Centre, which contributes to FOIP (Free and Open Indo-Pacific).
  • Defence technology for the LCA and next generation of air defence ships is important since the Rolls Royce MT30 engines have proven themselves and are used in the Indo-Pacific.
• Trade and investments: The UK has publicly announced a 1- billion-pound trade and investment deal with India.
  • Green technology upgrades for existing manufacturing technologies in India could be useful gains for India.
  • The UK is positioning Oxford- AstraZeneca-SII as a model that could be replicated with British R&D and investment-supported manufacturing in India.
• People-to-people engagement: The UK proposes to provide 3,000 work visas for Indian professionals for two years as part of the mobility and migration agreement.
  • The UK would like to reclaim the Indian student market and try and make things easier. Many of the professional visas would, perhaps, go to the Indian students in the UK.

Challenges to India-UK partnership:

• In defence and security: The presence of the British Navy in our region and more frequent exercises are of limited significance since the UK has been unable to get China to abide by its agreement on Hong Kong.
• Trade and Investments: The UK is not a major trade partner of India, and also services and social mobility have often been contentious under the proposed FTA.
  • Inadequate investment: A quarter of the 1 billion pound investment is by the Serum Institute of India in a new vaccine production facility in the UK.
  • Imbalance in FDI relationship: India is the second-largest job creator in the UK through its FDI.
  • Issues of retrospective taxation and non-fulfilment of arbitral awards, like in the cases of Vodafone and Cairns, evoke UK reaction.
• People-to-people engagement: Verification of the nationality of ‘illegal’ people, mainly from Punjab, could not be carried out in the past and thus put questions over their re-admission.
• Domestic interference: Indian diaspora does try to invoke domestic issues in the UK Parliament, hurting the relationship between the two.
• Extradition issues: Another area of concern is the ease with which Indian economic fugitives find it easy to stay in Britain.