Testing The Strategic Embrace: The First Trump Modi Bilateral

Testing The Strategic Embrace: The First Trump-Modi Bilateral

Things appear to be "All shook up" to much of the world ever since the Trump Administration took over in America.

The new President's much publicised "unpredictability" has something to do with the perception.

And his ready willingness to challenge shibboleths -NATO, the UN, the relationship with Germany and Britain, certainly North Korea, if not quite China, climate accords, Mexico.

Also there have been, several sallies against Indians taking American jobs, and getting away with being a major polluter. Pakistan too has been warned to stop aiding and abetting terrorists.

Put together, it has the pundits guessing at Trump's next move. He is said to play a baffling game of hard and soft ball simultaneously. But is it a negotiating stance, or plain ineptitude and confusion ask the less charitable analysts?

But much of the existential bile on display may well be because Donald Trump's resounding win last November confounded the analysts and pollsters alike. At least, till very near the end of the presidential campaign.

His unstoppable win as a rank outsider to the political establishment shocked, and profoundly disrupted, the fondly held "world-view" of   the liberal US media, and  that of the supporters of the Opposition Democrats.

And this incredulity continues to run through the liberal-left all around the world.

But, as  Prime Minister Modi touches down in Washington, the ambient "noise" clearly hasn't deterred either India or the US from potentially taking forward their "strategic" relationship.

It is one, advanced decisively, after years of the Nixon-Kissinger-bred dislike of India's erstwhile geostrategic positioning in the Soviet camp.

It was the George W Bush and Barak Obama presidencies, a Democrat administration following on from a Republican one, that saw India drawing closer to the US, albeit in a very slow minuet, drawn out over the last 16 years.

This is cited as evidence of bipartisan support for a tilt to balance the burgeoning influence of China in the Asian theatre.

Of course, India being a minnow compared to the Chinese major carp, it will need a lot of strategic partnering, if this vision, should it be held fast to, is to be realised.

But the very slowness of developments in the US "tilt", combined with compensatory and preservative moves to assuage both Chinese and Pakistani concerns, have reduced its credibility over the years in both countries.

However, India does source increasing amounts of its military requirements from the US now and bilateral trade tops $100  billion.

Journalist Seema Sirohi is much quoted for pointing out that America has a plethora of overlapping regulations from multiple US Government departments and authorities with regard to the transfer of "proprietory technology".  This, in the context of the recently signed MoU between India's Tata and Lockheed Martin to manufacture the  latest version of the F-16 fighters in India.

And India, on its part, is very keen on the technology transfer part of any military purchase, or Make-in-India project.

Sirohi suggests that the inking of the pact between the two corporate entities cannot really go forward without enabling, and usually long-winded, US Government approvals.

She does indicate  however that there is an improbable scramble to  get US Government backing for the deal during Modi's brief two day visit.

Other issues, such as the Trumpian vow to stop shifting US jobs overseas, also need to be addressed.

The media reports on the proposal say one thing and its opposite at the same time.

Some suggest that it has been done in anticipation  of receiving Indian Air Force (IAF) orders for at least 100 fighters.

And others espouse its diametric opposite,   that the F-16 production line will not move from Texas, to be henceforth manufactured in India, unless the Indian Ministry of Defence places orders first.

There is also the question of how future Pakistani orders for the plane or its spares will be handled.

The F-16 is a tried and tested aircraft, of which over 3,000 are in use in 26 different airforces around the world.

By way of contrast to the  uncertainty on the implementation of the F-16 agreement, the Trump administration has  just cleared, on the eve of the Modi visit, the sale of 22 "unarmed" Guardian drones (The Guardian Maritime Predator B Variant), manufactured by General Atomics.

This is something that the previous Obama administration sat on, even as the Indian Navy requested access to them about a year ago.

This drone sale clearance therefore, pending a formal announcement, perhaps while Modi is in the US, is being seen as the first  operational evidence of India's enhanced status as a "major defence partner". This was decided on by the Obama administration, towards its final days.

In other news,  even as  the restrictions on Indian IT personnel and their H1B visas will probably not see much leeway, there is a possibility of  establishing a personal chemistry between the two leaders.

They have spoken three or more times on the telephone so far.

Both are partial outsiders to the entrenched political establishment in their respective countries, relentlessly criticised by those they have so decisively displaced.

Trump famously calls disparaging commentary on himself "fake news" and dubs most of his critics "liars".

Modi also hits back against his detractors, particularly in his public speeches on the stump, tearing into the malicious,if sour-graped mockery.

And though Trump is a billionaire, and Modi rose from humble beginnings, their right-of-centre orientation,combined with populist and patriotic leanings, their fondness for military strength, and a dogged determination to change things, is something they certainly have in common.

History has seen fit to cut both Narendra Modi and Donald Trump, in some ways, from the same
cloth. This, does make for a certain anticipatory frisson for this first bilateral.

President Trump on his part,  has also been setting the stage. He has criticized Pakistan with regard to its sponsorship of international terrorism, particularly in Afghanistan and India. And the bipartisan sponsorship of a new bill, that seeks to do away with Pakistan's status as a major non-Nato ally of the US, is also an interesting development. He has also put China on notice for its activities in the South China Sea.

India, on its part, clearly wants access to high technology military equipment for its Make in India programme. It already has some joint ventures and collaborations with the US, Russia, Israel, South Korea, and France, spread across missiles, submarines, aircraft-carriers, helicopters, howitzers, drones etc., and also in vital “intelligence” sharing.

The Modi Government does however need to address the issue of  new fighter aircraft urgently.
It scrapped, in 2015, the complex, one-sided, and monolithic, winner-takes-all  Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) tender.

As a stop-gap measure, the Modi Government ordered 36 of the French Dassault Rafale twin-engined fighters.

This pipped the aspirations of the Eurofighter Typhoon, American options such as Lockheed's F-18, and Boeing's F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet and Russian MiG-35s. That they lost in technical trials to the Dassault Rafale notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, in the less expensive single-engined fighter stakes, the indigenously developed (but largely made with foreign componentry) Tejas,has at last made a relatively low-cost entry- in its first rendition. This version is nevertheless on order already for squadron strength numbers.

Future generations of the new, improved, Tejas, will also be inducted into the Indian Air Force (IAF).

While India has indicated the need to add just one more line of single-engined fighters, given the immense delays and glitches in the Tejas project, this policy may have to be modified towards a multiplicity instead.

With local plants, maintenance and spares will be far less problematic, even from multiple vendors.
For now, the single-engined Tata-Lockheed F-16 Block 70, should it pass muster through both governments, will likely compete for custom with the similarly single-engined Saab-Adani's Gripen-E. Both manufacturers are keen to set up their production lines in India.

With over 200 aircraft on the shopping list for a start, both in single and double-engined formats, there is certainly enough to go around.

India needs to increase its air power up to a minimum strength of 44-45 squadrons, from the grossly inadequate 32 squadrons of mostly old aircraft at present.

The longer term need is to replace practically the whole fleet, save the Russian Sukhois.

By this reckoning, India will need over a 1,000 aircraft eventually.

Making these planes in India, particularly in numbers, will be much less expensive and strategically secure.

Theoretically, both the Gripen-E and the F-16 could each get enough orders initially to make their local ventures economically viable. This, besides catering to export demand for aircraft, spares, refurbishments, customisation.

All this, while vastly increasing India's strategic military manufacturing depth.

The present squadrons of single-engined MiG-21's,that make up 75% of the IAF, are superannuated.
In the wings, there is also discussion on the Indo-Russian joint venture development of the Sukhoi 50, a vastly expensive if correspondingly advanced, state-of-the-art twin-engined fighter.

But this visit to America is much more than a military shopping expedition. It has the potential to become a substantive new beginning to the strategic embrace between India and America. Will this  elusive promise be fulfilled this time?

For: ABP Live
June 24th, 2017
Gautam Mukherjee

Fillip To Ship-Building & Repairs...

Fillip To Ship-Building & Repairs: L&T Builds First Indigenous Dry Dock

In under two years, Larsen &Toubro (L&T),has commissioned the first home-built dry dock using digital 3D technologies for accurate implementation of specifications.

The diversified engineering, construction, defence manufacturing, infrastructure building, financial services etc. major has created a new milestone both for itself and the country. And this, at a time when Government policy, crucially, is supportive of  such an initiative.

The brand new high-tech facility (FDN-2), that floats at 8,000 tonnes displacement, will mainly target the repairs of Indian Navy ships and submarines plying between the mainland and Port Blair in the Andamans.

It is located at the company's own L&T Shipyard, at Kattupalli, near Chennai in Tamil Nadu.
Winning an Indian Navy tender for the purpose at Rs. 468 crores in May 2015, the floating "dry dock", was designed and built on time by L&T.

Launched this week into the waters of the Bay of Bengal, by Indian Navy Vice Admiral DM Deshpande, Controller of Warship Production & Acquisition, and his wife Anjali Deshpande,  the 185 metre long and 40 metre wide floating dock will go operational within eight weeks.

It features an automated  ballast control system, the latest machinery and control  systems, and all necessary safety features to protect the docking naval assets.

While ship-repairs and dry-docking has been operational for over a century in India, starting in colonial times, it has never before been part of a massive and comprehensive Make In India initiative, particularly aimed at the lucrative defence production area.

Defence production has been thrown open to the privates, foreign enterprise, and joint ventures with suitable international partners, for the first time in a determined manner.

This, in order to save foreign exchange, make overall savings, acquire technologies and skills, gain strategic control of the milllitary machine, achieve force multipliers, and increase implementation speed.

What was lacking in recent times, with the exception of another  private defence oriented shipyard, built and owned by Reliance in Gujarat, were state-of-the-art facilities.

This is because the Government resources are stretched, and the smaller privates could not cope with the capital intensive and high technology nature of keeping up with international shipyards and dry docks.

Almost all significant ship-building and repairs conducted within India, even as bigger jobs went abroad, or were bought out in toto, have been in Government hands so far. This, despite the under funding, expertise gaps,inadequate technology, and the lack of a sense of professionalism that comes from the profit motive.

While these Government establishments continue even now, the big boys from the private sector have also made an entrance.

The Pipaphav ship yard and dry dock for example, created by Anil Ambani led Reliance Defence and Engineering Limited (RDEL), has some Rs. 5,700 crores of small craft repairing in-hand. These include offshore patrol vehicles,small naval refits,offshore supply vehicle repairs,servicing a couple of oil rigs,a clutch of fast patrol boats, and even a Panamax bulk carrier.

But this is not particularly representative of the potential. RDEL has recently been permitted to bid for Rs. 30,000 crores in Indian Navy contracts.

Reliance, Mahindra, Tata, like L&T, expect defence manufacturing'maintenance/repairs/refitting, for all the sections of the Indian military, to become  a major part of its business in years to come.

The Prime Minister, on his part, wants at least $150 billion worth of defence production to be carried out within India in the near future.

This L&T home-grown floating dock is a first piece of enabling infrastructure for the company. It implies, that soon, much bigger shipyards and dry docks will also be indigenously built, by L&T and other Indian companies, along the coastline.

This might obviate the need to go abroad for commissioning or refurbishment/repair of the bigger Indian Navy ships.

This move to set up our own cutting edge facilities will also attract foreign investment and overseas business from countries that wish to tap our resources, and exponentially improve our skilling in this specialised area.

According to an occasional paper from the Export-Import Bank of India (EXIM) from 8 years ago, India's public sector Cochin Shipyard and Hindustan Shipyard had the infrastructure to build vessels of 1.1 lakh  dry weight tonnes (dwt) and 80,000 dwt respectively. This has not changed much since then.

In 2009 also, Indian shipyards had orders for 260 ships representing just 1% of global tonnage (GT), and 2.8% in terms of bookings. This is no more than a negligible presence.

By way of contrast, China was building 3,523 ships, South Korea- 1675, Japan-1286 and Europe, all told, was building 447 ships, all in the same year.

Though global ship-building has halved since the economic crash of 2008, the need for India to build up its Navy to counter the challenges from China in the region  has grown urgent.

Servicing this need can, and will, lead to exponential growth for both the private and public sectors, given the indigenous policy thrust.

The civilian ship repair industry in 2009, itself stood at about $12 billion, but India was tapping under $100 million  of it.

The potential to grow in various directions therefore, is massive. The opportunity in repairs and refurbishment of  international commercial shipping, perhaps with their entrenched arrangements in recessionary times, is not so great for India.

But under the present enlightened and liberalised policies, nothing can prevent a resurgent Indian capability, or even high tech joint ventures with suitable expertise from abroad, from servicing the growing needs of  Indian commercial shipping and the Indian Navy.

It is not just in repairs,refits, and refurbishments, and not even in building new warships and submarines according to Indian Navy designs, but in R&D and the use of new technologies such as digital 3D that can transform our design and build capabilities.

India, working through its  Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), is currently collaborating on transfer of technologies on six of the Kalavari variant of the French diesel-electric Scorpene class submarines. These  are being built in the Government's Mazagaon Docks in Mumbai.

There is no reason why India cannot build the next six, perhaps along with the private sector, and on its own.

For: SIRFNews
June 21st 2017
Gautam Mukherjee

The Start Of Multiplicity...

The Start Of Multiplicity:The Make-In-India Single Engine/Double Engine Fighter

The massive delay in implementing the medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) procurement has thrown up a multiplicity of "silver-lining" options.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his foreign policy, has demonstrated that he favours bilateral dealings with all perceived strategic partners, cutting across tension lines and interest blocks to do so.

This has vastly improved, within a short time, India’s engagement with a great deal more of the world.

Likewise, the erstwhile buy-in defence procurement is morphing into manufacturing, and similar benefits are starting to accrue, and not least because it is seen as a major driver of both foreign investment and manufacturing- based employment.

The Lockheed-Tata announcement at the Paris Air Show that it will make F-16 fighters in India, comes on the eve of Prime Minister Modi's visit to meet President Trump in Washington on the 25-26th of June.

President Trump on his part, is setting the stage, by tightening the screws on Pakistan with regard to its sponsorship of international terrorism, particularly in Afghanistan and India.

Indian preparation to meet its security challenges has already led to an evolution into joint ventures and collaborations with the US, Russia, Israel, South Korea, and France, spread across missiles, submarines, aircraft-carriers, helicopters, howitzers, drones, helmets, assault rifles, protective gear, night vision goggles, and on the “software” side, vital “intelligence” sharing.

The Modi Government scrapped, in 2015, the complex, one-sided, and monolithic, winner-takes-all MMRCA tender.

It was the biggest of its kind before it was aborted by the Modi Government spot-purchasing, on order, 36 of the French Dassault Rafale twin-engined fighters.

This pipped the aspirations of the Eurofighter Typhoon, American options such as Lockheed's F-18, and Boeing's F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet and Russian MiG-35s.

That they lost in technical trials to the Dassault Rafale notwithstanding.

Can the rejected suitors, and others too, come forward again under Modi's  vastly liberalised defence manufactring “Make-in-India” clarion call? Why, in principle, not?

If they can offer new versions, capable of taking on the advantages of the Rafale, and willing to manufacture in India, that is.

The competition, along transparent and known parameters, will keep everyone in the renewed fray honest and nimble.

Meanwhile, in the less expensive single-engined fighter stakes, the indigenously developed (but largely made with foreign componentry) Tejas,has at last made a relatively low-cost entry- albeit in its first rendition. This version is on order already for squadron strength numbers.

Future generations of the new, improved, Tejas, will be inducted into the Indian Air Force (IAF) too.

While India has spoken only in terms of adding just another line of single-engined fighters, so far, given the immense delays and glitches in the Tejas project, this policy may be modified towards a multiplicity instead.

With local plants, maintenance and spares will be far less problematic, even from multiple vendors.

For now, The Tata-Lockheed F-16 Block 70, will likely compete for custom with the Saab-Adani's Gripen-E.

Both are keen to set up their production lines in India in anticipation of future orders.

With over 200 aircraft on the shopping list, both in single and double-engined formats, there is certainly enough to go around.

India is working up its air power up to a minimum strength of 44-45 squadrons, from the grossly inadequate 32 squadrons of mostly old aircraft at present.

The real need is to replace practically the whole fleet, save the Sukhois.

So we may need over a 1,000 aircraft eventually, comprising of squadrons of 24 aircraft, in several "flights" each. And this is without counting the Navy, Army, and other agency requirements, in a scenario when every fighting arm wants its own airborne fire power.  

Making these planes in India, particularly in numbers, will be much less expensive and strategically secure.

Theoretically, both the Gripen-E and the F-16 could each get enough orders initially to make their local ventures economically viable, besides catering to export demand for aircraft, spares, refurbishments, customisation.

All this, while vastly increasing India's strategic military manufacturing depth.

The present squadrons of single-engined MiG-21's,that make up 75% of the IAF, are superannuated. They frequently crash, even during routine sorties, killing highly-trained pilots and civilians. And this is not because of being single-engined. Causes point towards pilot error and inferior, locally made parts.

Russia has more or less stopped making parts for these half century old planes from the Soviet era.

In the wings, there is also discussion on the Indo-Russian joint venture development of the Sukhoi 50, yet another advanced, state- of-the-art twin-engined fighter.

The single-engined fighters tend to perform as well, if not better than twin-engined aircraft in “dog-fights”.

The twin-engined aeroplanes are marginally faster, with greater thrust and acceleration, but are better suited to ground attack sorties.

In an aerial fight, they suffer from significantly greater wind drag, and the tail fuselage, where the twin-engines are located, together for combined thrust, tends to waggle.

And since the twin-engines are invariably bracketed together, in all global fighters designed so far, both tend to flame out, if one is hit. This nullifies any superior airworthiness for having a second engine. 

Also, in the unlikely event one engine does survive, the lop-sided thrust not only cuts speed by 50%, but the overall combat efficiency drops by a crippling 81%.

Single-engined fighters are smaller, lighter, faster, move better, are easier to maintain, and consume less fuel. In rare cases, they have even managed to land without an engine.

India can induct single and twin-engined fighters from multiple manufacturers, all with production facilities in India.

It is important to not put all ones' eggs in the same basket, given the vagaries of the ongoing arms race with China and Pakistan.

The F-16 in its latest Tata-Lockheed version, though not new like the single engined F-35, is also not experiencing problems of pilot debilitation from oxygen deprivation at the tissue level, for which they have actually been grounded in the US.

It is a far more experienced aircraft than the Rafale, and can work at high altitude, alongside the Gripen -E.

The F-16 beats the twin-engined F-18 in combat situations.

Concern that the Indian plant would have to service Pakistani orders, owners, along with a number of other countries of some 3,200 of this aircraft, can be easily bypassed, via Texas, the home base of the F-16.

Multiple vendors on the ground supplying large number of India manufactured aircraft over the coming years will also trigger price and technological competition. 

And provide strategic depth in case production needs to be sharply ramped up at any stage.

For: ABP Live

(1,081 words)

June 20th, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee

India Makes Cut-Price Entry Into Heavy Satellite Launch Club

India Makes Cut-Price Entry Into Heavy Satellite Launch Club

With the smooth launch of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) indigenous 640 tonne rocket, India has just joined a lucrative, if tiny, club of five member countries. The rocket was tall as a 13 storey building, and called the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), Mark III, or affectionately "Fat Boy" by its creators.

The global “Space Economy”  for big satellites ticks over at $330 billion per 2015 figures, growing at 9% over 2014.

Commercial Space activity accounts for 76% of the total. The industry has also been growing consistently at7%  compounded between 2005 and 2014. The speed now, seems to be accelerating. This, according to Doug Messler of the Space Foundation, Colorado Springs, in where else, Colorado.

Extrapolating on these 2015 figures by 10% per annum gives us nearly $400 billion at the start of 2017, with about 80% of it commercial activity, such as global navigation satellite systems integrated with  billions of smartphone microchips receiving signals- a business itself growing at 18% p.a..

This is what these “big boys” sell, apart from the surveillance, spying, tracking, the weather-mapping, military communication, imaging, guiding of digitally controlled weaponry, satellite TV, high-speed internet, drones, and so on.

India’s long quest to develop its own economical but effective cryogenic engine has been realized at last. Now it can not only launch heavy geostationary satellites up to 4,000 kg. in weight, to orbit at 36,000 km in space already, but can potentially mount manned space flights in the not too distant future.

This rocket, built and sent at a cost of just Rs. 300-400 crores per launch, and its even more powerful successors anticipated, capable of hoisting 6,000 kg. satellites, could corner a good proportion of the nearly 20 heavy ones sent up annually, circa 2017.

Besides, the satellites too are improving, with lighter, lower mass electric propulsion satellites to guide them to their docking positions, coming up.  

Even if India takes 5% of the geo satellite business at first, it means about  $ 16 billion.

Compared to the whole of the small and micro satellite launching business, where ISRO is already quite prominent, at $5.5 billion total, the potential in the big satellite business is immensely greater financially speaking.

Analysts and policy wonks are divided over ISRO’s role however, and it can be argued that as a government agency, it is not completely profit driven as, for example, Ariane of France, or  SpaceX of the US is.

Still, ISRO wants to build/modify and fire up at least one GSLV per year going forward, and conduct as many as 12 launches, including those of the little satellites via the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle ( PSLV) programme.

All this costs a lot of money by Indian standards, and if the ISRO could self-finance itself, that would be altogether marvelous, and provide elbow room to it, and the government.

This first time, India launched only its own 3,136 kg. “GSAT 19” communications satellite.

The GSLV Mark III, sent into space from Sriharikota, was nicknamed “Fat Boy” by its scientists, likening its 640 tonnes to the weight of 20 elephants.

India is already a leading purveyor of small payloads into space, routinely launched by India’s  PSLV programme. It is not only effective, but the most economical in the world, in this $5.5 billion segment.

Currently, the players capable of hoisting the 2,500 Kg, to more than 5,400 kg  “Geo Satellites” into geostationary orbits in space, 36,000 km from earth, come from just five countries.  

There is the US government’s NASA’s successors of Titan, from the 1980s. America, in fact, sent up its Saturn V, way back, between 1967 and 1973, with its total mass at lift-off at four times the present Indian rocket!  

Then there is Lockheed Martin’s Atlas series, Boeing’s Delta, and the Falcon, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy from  SpaceX.

There’s Russia’s Roscosmos’ Proton, and Angara too, France’s Ariane, China’s Long March series, and Japan’s Mitsubishi series.

India is late to the table because it was denied access the then available technology, owing to sanctions, post India’s unilateral nuclear weaponisation in 1998.

Still, many of the original scientists who began work on the home grown cyrogenic engine in 2002, based on Russian/Ukranian blueprints of the time, were on hand to witness the new Indian designs and successful launch in 2017, after several earlier failures.

With an increasing reputation for frugal engineering, ISRO is an exceptional success story for Indian Science and the government-owned public sector. That it is poised to reap a golden harvest from its excellence, is reason for celebration.

Will it also spawn private sector and joint venture interest, even competition, going forward?

Only time, and the commercial opportunities thrown up in the space business will tell.

For: ABP Live

(785 words)

June 6, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee

Modi Goes To Europe To Initiate A New Season Of Bilaterals

Modi Goes To Europe To Initiate A New Season Of Bilaterals

The thing with the European Union (EU) is its mini-bus load of 27members. This after not counting the one that recently got off, but is yet to complete its divorce negotiations.

An outsider might be forgiven, given the names of some of them, for thinking there are just too many freeloaders at the buffet table.

Doing a deal with Germany or France, who drive the bus at their own risk, and a disproportionate, some would say unsupportable, share of the cost, means you just did a deal with Malta as well.

Negotiations with Brussels however, are ponderous and reminiscent of the once-upon-a-time Concert of Europe.

So it is significant that Prime Minister Modi has chosen to visit the three top economies in the EU, on a bilateral basis, while missing out Brussels, which is the seat of the EU government of 27 nations.

But Modi took care in Germany, to plump for European unity going forward, partly because it may be what his hostess wants to hear, and partly because a united EU offers a single market for India. At least for now. 

But being told what to do by Brussels, without concomitant benefit to British interests, may have been the very thing that prompted Brexit. Though the officiousness of EU's Brussels HQ, located in tiny Belgium, allegedly also played its part.

It wasn't just Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, after all, who was often constrained to clarify, with all the dignity he could muster, that he was Belgian, and not French.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was undoubtedly looking for one-on-one gains  during his calls on Berlin, Madrid, and Paris, between the 29th of May and the 3rd of June, with a visit to Russia in between, starting on the 31st of May.

So is the Chinese prime minister, from Germany's Numero Uno trading partner, compared to India's 24th slot - nevertheless following hot on his heels.

Modi thinks the time is opportune for this European visit, given the financial strains being experienced by the EU, where even Germany is growing at just 1.9% in GDP.

He is probably willing to trade on aspects of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU, stuck in limbo since 2013, if not the whole thing.

Both sides have been obdurate and self-focused, feeling justified to hold fast. But India may have the winning hand at this juncture.

This has prompted support for its NSG bid from Germany, mutual nods on fighting terrorism, and broad agreement on climate concerns, though short of formal acceptance from India on the last.

But even on bilateral investment agreements, there have been problems. A number of international arbitrations based on the recently expired one,  have all gone against India. This suggests that perhaps it was not drafted to secure Indian interests all that well, in the first place.

Though negotiations on the EU's FTA are expected to resume in July, what Germany, the EU's biggest economy, really wants, is a new “Investment Protection Pact” for itself. 

The old India-Germany Bilateral Investment Treaty expired in March after India gave a one year notice, as stipulated, to end it. There are 600 joint ventures with Germany operating in India at present and hundreds more German companies that trade with it. 

But there is also the matter of the EU proclaiming, in 2012, that its individual members would not henceforth enter into bilateral investment treaties.

But after Brexit, and existential threats to the EU's survival, there may have to be a rethink on the omnibus approach that favours, say, Latvia, more than it favours Germany.

India meanwhile, wants more of the mid-sized German engineering companies to form joint ventures in India.

Though of long standing, India's trade with Germany is at a paltry Euro 17.4 billion in 2016. This compares badly with Germany's Euro 169.9 billion trade with China. And moreover, this is more or less evenly balanced.

Nevertheless, Germany is now uncomfortable with China's opaque One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative. It does not indicate any road-map for the participation of other countries in the contracts for all its infrastructure development.

India made clear that it wants new Make in India deals. Only, it wants them on a bilateral basis, in a “quantum leap” of “outcome-oriented” transactions.

So, if Germany wants an Indian concession on multi-brand retail, India just might agree as it frees up its foreign direct investment (FDI) norms, but only in return for a clutch of strategic German engineering collaborations back-to-back.

At this time, as many as eight broad pacts were signed but reciprocity will be the key to operationalising them going forward. Key amongst them were ones on “cyber politics” and “cooperation on digitalisation.”

Meanwhile, President Trump's no-holds-barred instruction to NATO to pay up its fair share of the costs, looking squarely at Germany at the time, may be adding urgency to the idea of expanding German presence in other markets.

While Modi visited Germany last in 2015, making little headway beyond friendly atmospherics, this time changed circumstances could produce results.

Next, it was the first time an Indian prime minister visited Madrid in three decades.

Here too, the most interesting pact signed was on “cyber security.”

Not only have cyber attacks been responsible for abstracting millions from Indian banks, but they are suspected to have addled military assets like Army mortars.

Most recently, a cyber attack is thought to be responsible for bringing down a mechanically sound Sukhoi fighter in North East India, and its pilots, out on a routine sortie.

Spain, the EU's third biggest economy, has also inked pacts to cooperate in the fields of aerospace and defence with India.

Modi visited St. Petersburg after Madrid, in order to attend a Russia sponsored International Economic Forum, and tick the box of India's 18th annual bilateral summit with Russia. Modi is the guest of honour at this first of a kind Russian hosted Economic Summit.

On India’s part, there is a home delegation of 60 business leaders that are participating, with a special India Pavilion at the venue.

The key bilateral takeaway is expected to be a signing of contracts for the Kundakulam V and VI nuclear power reactors.

The whole gamut of bilateral relations between India and Russia, is also scheduled to be reviewed by President Putin and Prime Minister Modi, especially in a season of shifting alliances.

With several other mega military deals in the balance, including a state-of-the-art anti-ballistic missile shield system and several joint venture manufacturing projects, for helicopters, battle tanks, etc. Russia will be seeking to woo India.

In France, the EU's second placed economy, it is a first meeting between the newly elected Emmanuel Macron, a Centrist, following on from a Socialist Hollande, and Narendra Modi.

Paris is already in the process of supplying the first 36 state-of-the-art Rafale fighters to India, even as a bigger contract to make hundreds more of the Rafales in India, is being negotiated.

Macron has indicated a keenness to participate more vigorously in Modi's Make in India programme, with other military items to join the Rafale. This even as the French nuclear reactors on offer are found to be much too expensive.

While sections of the international and domestic media have characterised this quartet of visits as a "power push”, the truth may be in being at the right places at the right time- even as outcomes are measured later.

America has signalled its unwillingness to prop up the European economy and its security going forward. How serious it is, cannot be immediately assessed. Still, there is something of a vacuum to be filled, and realignments to be made.

For: The Sunday Guardian

(1,267 words)

June 1st, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee