India is becoming an ever more central country to the UK with recent policy commitments by UK to work with its partners.
Revamp of the UK foreign policy has created many opportunities for India and UK to work together in avoiding critical dependencies and coercion by other major power players. The Ukraine situation and China’s growing aggression has also led the UK to revise its 2021 security and foreign policy. India has a lot to gain from these new policy commitments like that of working to secure interests in the Indo-Pacific, call for including India as permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and more.
India having overtaken China in terms of education, cooperation in science and technology and project investment, it has become more central to the UK. British high commissioner Alex Ellis ascertained that India and UK will be working together more and more especially to combat the impact of coercion and critical dependencies heightened by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The high commissioner also affirmed that the free trade agreement (FTA) between the countries is at an endgame stage of negotiations with the focus being on greater openings of goods market and new work routes.
Trigger point for policy review
The behaviour of China combined with the instability caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted the UK to review its defence, security, development, and foreign policy. With China having ingrained itself into the world’s logistics supply chain while continuing its aggressions in other aspects, the need to address critical dependencies has become even more apparent.
The imbalance in the global order due to Russia’s actions is a fundamental point in this review. Despite this the core components of the review that is strategic competition, a shift of power, the importance of science and technology, and worsening global challenges remain. The Indo-Pacific tilt has also gone further with another concept of Atlantic-Pacific now emerging. India is going to be one of the three defining countries of the world with USA and China in dealing with things in a global way.
India-Russia historic relations and role of India
India has strong ties with Russia in terms of strategic military partnerships and trade. These relations and the principles of nonalignment have prompted the country to maintain neutrality in the face of the Russia-Ukraine conflict despite risking a conflict of interest with USA and other European countries.
India has displayed resilience when it comes to its foreign policy stands, the UK is catching up to this and also thinking of its own resilience now. This resilience is only increased through closer cooperation with its allies. There is whole range on how this could be done with trade agreements being one.
Endgame FTA negotiations
The talks of an FTA between India and UK have been around for quite some time with the formal negotiations having started in 2022. The negotiations aim at achieving a balanced bilateral trade agreement that covers around 90% of tariff lines. The agreement is set to diversify supply chains in both countries and facilitate employment generation.
The negotiations are down to the crucial point of greater opening up of goods markets of both countries. On the point of services exchange common ground has been reached in relation to regulations for foreign lawyers and new work routes for Indian nationals.
The next round of trade negotiations are set to begin in the upcoming weeks with the topics of patent regime for pharmaceutical companies, work visas and automobile import being key. Despite the deal being in the last stages quickness is not sought after as the UK desires a secure quality of provisions while the Indian side is cautious of the non-trade subjects involved in the free trade agreement.
