As the Indian economy has just overtaken the UK’s as the fifth-largest in the world and is set to re-emerge as the fastest-growing big economy in 2022 (7.4 percent forecast), there is rising European business interest in this last huge untapped market. At the same time, with EU-China ties increasingly strained, India has gained importance as the EU’s geopolitical partner in the Indo-Pacific and Asia.
As such, Europe has muted its criticism of India and accepted both the country’s neutrality on the Russian war in Ukraine and prime minister Narendra Modi’s undemocratic conduct and discrimination of minorities.
In its latest Democracy Report 2022 on “Autocratisation’s Changing Nature”, the V-Dem Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenberg classified India as an electoral autocracy and says it is one of the top 10 “autocratisers” in the world.
In a push for strengthened partnership, the EU and India established the Trade and Technology Council in April and relaunched negotiations of a free trade agreement (FTA) in June.
Still one should not underestimate the differences revealed by recent developments.
The positive reaction to Modi’s “today is not an era of war” remark to Vladimir Putin in Samarkand in September tells more about the goodwill India still enjoys in the West and our wishful thinking than about any real change on the ground.
The Indian official position has evolved only slightly since February and is not very far away from China’s.
Without Patriots, Ukraine turns to drones and jamming against Russian Iskanders (Ukraine battlefield update, day 1,598)
