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Putin’s India Visit
Wants India To Be Balancer

By M. R. Josse

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was in India recently on a four-day visit that took him to New Delhi, Agra and Mumbai -- hot on the heels of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s memorable tour of the United States last month.

Whether intended or not, the timing of the Putin visit is probably meant to signal that despite a conspicuous warming of Indo-American ties in the past year, India is not, in effect, tilting towards the West or NATO.

(Putin paid recent visits to China and Japan. He was also in New York for the UN Millennium Summit in early September.)

Of course, as all know, the perception is widespread among the movers and shakers in the Indian capital that Clinton’s Washington is leaning away from Pakistan towards India.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP: Be that as it may, in India, the 47-year old, Maschimo former KGB official signed a strategic partnership accord which, in a way, is a follow-up to the 1971 Indo-Soviet Pact which paved the way, among other things, for consolidation of New Delhi-Moscow ties during the heyday of the Cold War when India invariably sided with Moscow against the West.

Like US President Bill Clinton, Putin was housed at the luxury Maurya Sheraton hotel, no doubt as a subtle signal that India is currently perfectly balanced between Moscow and Washington.

For all that, the Indian media hype for the Putin visit was however noticeably tempered as compared to that which greeted Clinton on his "honeymoon" extravaganza in March.

Yet, it is not as if that was not discernible as, for example, was reflected in the ‘Hindustan Times’ light-hearted prediction that by the time Putin and his wife Lyudmila left India they should be able to hum Raj Kapoor’s 1951 musical hit number from ‘Awara’: "Sar pe lal topi Rusi phir bhi dil hai Hindustani."

Putin’s Indian mission comes after Russian premier Primakov’s visit a few years ago, during Boris Yeltsin's presidency, when he proposed that Russia, India and China come together to counter the unipolarity of the global system. (That, incidentally, hasn’t not yet congenial for the same.)

Putin himself clarified the Russian position vis-à-vis India in a remarkably lucid pre-visit interview to Indian journalists.

NATURAL ALLIES: First of all, of course, he flattered India by describing her as a "greater power" and went on to add that India is a "fitting contender" for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council when it is expanded, South Block’s long-time foreign policy goal.

(By an odd coincidence, such utterances were timed when India’s performance at the Sydney Olympiad was its most dismal in years; it could only manage a solitary bronze medal.

Incidentally, South Asia’s other nuclear power, Pakistan, could not even secure that! On the other hand, the P-5 "great nations" -- US, Russia, China, France and Britain -- made it to the top of the Olympics totem pole, the first three’s performance being particularly impressive.)

More importantly, however, Putin spelt out a key element of his world view by declaring: "Our interests will be met if India becomes a mighty, developed, independent state, which would help to create a balance in the world."

Interestingly, the theme of India as a global balancer -- outlandish or overblown as it may seem outside India/Russia -- was taken up just after the interview by India strategic guru, K. Subrahmanyam.

Writing an op-ed piece in the Times of India on the day that Putin was to arrive in New Delhi (2 October, 2000), Subrahmanyam brilliantly argued the case for India as a "new balancer" in Eurasia, the burden of his thesis being that "India is a potential balancer of power in Eurosia, a reservoir of talent for the US, a nation with no basic clash of national interests with the US, ideologically on the same wavelength as a democracy and an English-speaking nation."

While time alone will tell whether the role of India as a global balancer is a realistic one or not, it is significant that Putin described India as a "natural ally" -- inevitably recalling the once-heard refrain that the Soviet Union is a "natural ally" of the non-aligned!

Moving on the Declaration on Strategic Partnership, signed between India and Russia during the Putin visit, it is notable that the Russian head of state in his pre-visit interview alluded to above and said that he was in favour of Russia, India and China joining efforts to promote their interests in Asia but noted that such cooperation should be open to other parties too, and should be transparent to the international community."

The Indian media, in the run-up to the visit, made much of Putin’s suggestion that India and Russia could combat international terrorism and religious extremism effectively by pooling their efforts.

TERRORISM: Though one can well understand why that should be so, it may be in order not to forget that, just days before Putin’s India visit, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, a key contributor to the shaping of Russian foreign policy, visited Pakistan where he met with Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and Chief Executive, Gen. Parvez Musharraf.

Before more is read into Putin’s utterances on international terrorism one may note not only that Putin met Musharraf on the sidelines of the UN Millennium Summit but also recent news reports that Putin is considering a visit to Pakistan himself.

Of course, no satisfactory assessment of Putin’s India visit can be attempted without taking not of reactions, among other capitals, in Washington, Beijing and Tokyo, particularly with respect to Putin’s view of India as a global balancer and as Russia’s "natural alley."

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