Russian Dhol: What we learned from the Modi-Putin summit + Budget talk

Plus, notes on Karnataka, the BJP in UP and Bangladesh.

Jul 22, 2024

Welcome back to India Inside Out, where our eyes are only partially turned westward, not least because there are even more desi connnections to the upcoming US election (don’t even ask about ‘Operation Coconut Tree’) along with complex, contested arguments about the Indian-American community, and its expanding influence in the US. More about American developments on The Election Tricycle later this week.

It’s budget week in India. The Budget Session of the Indian Parliament begins on July 22, with the Budget itself to be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on July 23. This will likely give us our clearest sign to date of how the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi assess their surprisingly poor electoral results earlier this year, and what policy levers they hope to pull in an effort to rebuild BJP dominance. We wrote a couple of weeks ago about what ‘historic steps’ Modi might be considering for his third term and our link round-up last week featured a series of pieces that look under the hood of the Indian economy, going into a Budget Session that was originally billed as likely to feature a blueprint to catapult India into ‘developed nation’ status by 2047.
A few more links before Budget day: Kadambari Shah speaks to experts about the reforms that weren’t carried out in 1991, Montek Ahluwalia on the road to 2047, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha on a more balanced federal design, Arindam Das and Jean Dreze on wages, Roshan Kishore on taxes under Modi and Swami Aiyar thinks it will be more of the same.’
“Knives are out” in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Uttar Pradesh unit, as the party evaluates what went wrong in the state where, instead of the expected dominance, it won fewer seats than the Samajwadi Party-led opposition. Read pieces by Saba Naqvi, Omar Rashid and Vikas Pathak.
Congress-led Karnataka had to put on hold a proposed law that would have required companies to set aside a percentage of jobs for candidates who had resided in the state for at least 15 years and are proficient in Kannada. The proposed law led to a huge outcry from businesses and industry bodies, and brought up questions of whether it was even legal, given that similar efforts by other states have been struck down by the courts. Read pieces by Yamini Aiyar and on Anticipating the Unintended.
Bangladesh has been hit by large-scale student-led protests over government job quotas seen as partial to Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina’s Awami League, leading to a brutal crackdown and violent clashes with at least a hundred dead. (See this, and this).

Russian Dhol

We speculated a few weeks ago about what ‘historic steps’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi might choose to take early on in his third term, building on the conventional wisdom that the most difficult decisions ought to be made soon after an election victory. While that discussion was primarily domestic, Modi’s first controversial1 move ended up being in the foreign policy arena.

Indian prime ministers traditionally make a trip to a neighbouring capital for their first post-election visit, a practice Modi had adhered to in his first two terms. But this time Modi chose a slightly more distant destination: Moscow.

Ever since the invasion of Ukraine, the commentary cycle in response to new developments in India-Russian ties has been reasonably predictable, as was the case this time around:

New Delhi reaffirms its commitment to India-Russia ties – on this occasion, Putin even personally conferred the Order of St Andrew the Apostle, Russia’s top civilain award, upon Modi – with observers seeing this as the translation of multipolarity and multialignment talk into action. (See Zorawar Daulet Singh, Akhil Ramesh).
Western commentators, both official and unofficial, offer complaints and indignation. (See this Washington Post report suggesting the US asked India to change the dates of the Modi-Putin meeting so they wouldn’t coincide with the NATO summitand Trump-era National Security Advisor HR McMaster’s tweet. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, who met Modi face-to-face earlier this year for the first time, also reacted angrily).
Indian observers respond to these Western complaints by pointing to Eurocentric hypocrisy and a tendency to deliver righteous lectures. (c.f. Kanwal Sibal, India Today).
A Global Times article displays its glee at the tiniest indication of India-West division.
Another set of Indian observers decries Modi’s unwilligness to build closer ties with the US, arguing that Moscow has little to realistically offer New Delhi (c.f. Rajesh Rajagopalan, whom we interviewed last year, and Pranay Kotasthane).
Russians insist India’s behaviour is proof that Moscow is not isolated, even as quieter voices note the stagnation in the relationship beyond headline oil trade figures. (c.f. Tara Kartha).
India offers a vague statement that can be read as a critique of Russia – this time Modi said the “heart simply explodes” when innocent children die, a reference to a Russian military strike on Ukraine’s largest children hospital on the day the Indian prime minister arrived in Moscow – without having to actually assign blame in any direction, prompting praise for being “the only world leader with the intent and capability” to sit “across from Putin and deliver a stern message.”
Western governments express hope that New Delhi will use its Russian ties to alter Putin’s behaviour. (c.f. US ambassador to India Eric Garcetti, after earlier appearing to critique India’s ‘strategic autonomy’ policy).
Everyone moves onto the next thing (see references to the US elections, above).

Two important notes about this cycle:

I’m certainly not arguing that any of the analyses linked above is without value. Indeed, a number of them are incisive and thoughtful. It’s just that the camps and positions appear to have been staked out, and even Modi turning up in Moscow as an obvious split-screen moment to NATO leaders gathering in Washington, DC was not enough to veer the broader narrative off course.
That this course is ‘predictable’ in any sense is actually quite remarkable. It was not a given that India’s decision to walk the tightrope between the West and Russia in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis – which it attempted for a number of well-examined reasons – would pay off, but so far it evidently has.

But tightrope-walking is not easy, and inevitably leads to the question of how long New Delhi can pull this off. For the past two years, the question for many has been not so much if, but when India would slip from its perch. Given political trends in the US particularly on the Republican side where the mood seems defiantly against further support for Ukraine, however, an equally relevant question may well be: For how long will India’s position in this conflict even be perceived as a balancing act?

Despite the (now lame-duck) Biden administration’s reported efforts to get India to at least change the dates, Happymon Jacob points out that the moment actually appeared to be quite opportune on a number of fronts:

“The current Indian stance towards Russia appears to be driven by a set of interrelated beliefs. One, New Delhi believes Russia is winning the war, and being on the winning side is a good strategy from its perspective. Two, there has been negligible pressure from the US on India to alter its stance towards Russia. Three, Western and US engagement with India has only strengthened since the war began, providing no disincentives for India to change its policy.
Furthermore, Europe is currently on the back foot in the wake of the Gaza war, which has drastically eroded its moral standing. Thus, with little moral authority, Europe will not be able to exert significant normative pressure on India in relation to Russia. In that sense, there has never been a better time in the recent past to organise the India-Russia summit.”

Not mentioned here was the potential calculation that India may be making about Trump returning to the White House or, at the very least, the expectation that the electoral calendar in America offered the Biden administration little space to pick a bigger fight with New Delhi at the time. There is also a sense of Modi using the opportunity to get the Russia visit out of the way quickly after re-election – having postponed an India-Russia summit for a couple of years now – though that may be dispelled if the two leaders end up meeting more frequently over the next few years.

Given all that, then, maybe the most interesting article to come out of the whole cycle was a rambly piece that can reliably be expected to be channeling the thoughts of at least one strand of voices within the Indian government:

“Rather than some western propaganda media labeling the Modi-Putin hug as a rebuff to India’s western friends, the bilateral meeting in Moscow should be seen in the context of past legacy when west particularly US was promoting dictators in Pakistan than Indian democratic leadership for the Great Game in Afghanistan and the military rise of China… And that is the reason that PM Modi is totally committed on Aatmanirbhar Bharat and believes that Agniveer scheme will lay a nationalistic foundation for 2047 Viksit Bharat.
At a time when PM Modi is making bold diplomatic moves in the interest of India, it is time that Indian diplomacy and intelligence are tuned to Bharat’s requirements as the country marches to become the third largest economy in the world this decade.
Given that India believes in strategic autonomy and is not in alliance with neither the west or Chinese camps, it is imperative that Indian diplomats stop suffering for ‘localitis’ particularly when posted in the west and start defending Bharat without US or Russia bias. Signs of this movement are already visible in the Indian diplomats posted in the western countries.”

Can’t Make This Up

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To the extent there was a controversy over Modi’s visit, it too was on the international stage – not domestically.

India Inside Out by Rohan Venkat

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