Bangalore, Berlin With a brief remark, Olaf Scholz managed to put the host in a good mood in New Delhi even before his first trip to India. At the Munich Security Conference, the Chancellor repeated a quote from India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Accordingly, Europe cannot impose its problems on the rest of the world if at the same time Europe does not consider the problems in the rest of the world to be its own.
“There’s something to that sentence,” said Scholz. Shortly before his two-day visit to the country with 1.4 billion inhabitants, he presented himself as someone who understood India. With this, Scholz immediately made positive headlines in the Indian press.
On Saturday, the Chancellor arrives in New Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It hasn’t exactly made things easy for the West in the past twelve months. It is true that India seeks the closeness of Europeans and Americans when it comes to support in the conflict with China. With a view to the Ukraine war, however, even a year after the Russian invasion, Modi cannot bring himself to clearly condemn Russia.
Instead, India is massively expanding its business with Russia. As the West seeks to cut Russia’s energy revenues, India stands poised as a new major buyer of Russian oil alongside China. The rebates given to Indian refiners pushed imports from Russia to a record high in January.
India justifies the imports with its obligation to supply its own population with affordable energy. Western governments now seem to have accepted that Russia can use India to open up new sources of revenue.
Good relations seem more important than India’s connection with Russia
The US has already made it clear that it has no plans for secondary sanctions against India’s oil imports. The largest democracy in the world also obtains most of its armaments from Russia.
When visiting Berlin, Scholz had already ensnared Modi.
(Photo: dpa)
In New Delhi, Chancellor Scholz is not expected to take a stand against India’s business ties with Russia. Good relations with the rising power in South Asia seem more important at the moment. India is seen as an indispensable ally in reducing Germany’s economic dependence on China.
That’s why Scholz will be accompanied on his trip by a high-ranking twelve-strong business delegation, including the CEOs of Siemens and SAP sitting in the chancellor’s machine, Indian media reports after a briefing with the German ambassador.
According to government circles, India is a “key state” for Germany. The Chancellor does not believe that the two world powers, the USA and China, will divide the world up in the 21st century. The future will be multipolar, with large and prosperous nations in Africa and Asia.
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And the chancellor’s office is convinced that India is one of these nations. India is likely to overtake China as the most populous country in the world this year and has made the leap from an agricultural to a service country in record time. This has made it the fifth largest economy in the world.
The charm of Olaf Scholz
The Chancellor also acknowledges this development, and Scholz has hardly met any other head of government as often as India’s Prime Minister Modi. India was one of the five partner countries that Scholz invited to the G7 summit at Schloss Elmau at the end of June last year. Scholz had already received Modi in Berlin a good two months earlier, and the handshake between the two didn’t want to end at the time.
And this ensnarement also had an effect: at the G20 summit in Bali in November, India played a very constructive role from the German government’s point of view. The statement by the heads of state and government towards Russia was surprisingly critical, also thanks to the efforts of Modi and his people. But is this position still valid? Or is India increasingly weary of the conflict?
Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) can fathom the mood. He flew to Bangalore on Thursday, where he will meet his colleagues from the largest industrialized and emerging countries (G20).
The West is dependent on India – because of China and because it offers a potentially huge market. Jayati Ghosh, Indian economics professor
The finance ministers’ meeting is also dominated by the Ukraine war. At least that applies to Lindner and the other colleagues from the western industrialized countries (G7). The Indian government, on the other hand, wants to talk as little as possible about the war in Europe. Indian negotiators made it clear from the start that the G20 meeting was not intended to discuss sanctions against Russia.
Ahead of the G20 finance ministers’ meeting, Indian government officials made it remarkably clear that Western sanctions against Russia would damage the global economy. A current global survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) think tank also shows how different the perspectives on the Ukraine war are.
54 percent of all Indians surveyed, and thus more respondents than in any other region in the world, are of the opinion that Ukraine must, if necessary, cede territories to Russia in order to conclude peace. 51 percent see Russia as an “ally who shares our interests and values”.
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Scholz is not under the illusion that he can quickly win India over to the side of the West. The chancellor is promoting his view of the Ukraine war, said government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit. Government circles said, however, that one would not be able to ask India to side with the West during the trip. Anyone who does that will nullify all diplomatic successes.
High investment hurdles
Bangalore also showed that the G20 countries are still divided when it comes to condemning the war. Even before the actual meeting, the G7 finance ministers decided on their own communiqué, in which they condemned Russia and promised Ukraine further support.
When Lindner leaves again, Scholz will continue to fly to Bangalore to visit companies. According to a high-ranking German government official, there is “huge potential” in economic relations between Germany and India. Modi’s cabinet described itself as “business-friendly” when it took office and now hopes to benefit from the fact that German companies want to reduce their dependence on China and expand their base.
However, it doesn’t look as if India could become the “new China” anytime soon, according to a recent survey by India’s Chamber of Foreign Commerce. Almost 70 percent of the managers surveyed stated that they did not want to invest there at the moment. Almost a quarter of the local managers surveyed do not want to spend any more money because of the “barriers in India”.
A central problem: rampant bureaucracy. Scholz will therefore promote a free trade agreement between India and the EU in India. In the previous year there had been a restart of the previously sluggish negotiations.
Scholz, on the other hand, is unlikely to address the democratic deficits in India. Non-governmental organizations and journalists complain that they are regularly put under pressure by the government. “The West is dependent on India – because of China and because it offers a potentially huge market,” says Indian economics professor Jayati Ghosh.
The Indian government is aware of this. “She knows that when it comes to human rights, she’s allowed to get away with anything.”
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