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Электронное приложение к журналу «Международная жизнь»
Author : G. Ivashentsov
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
INDIA IS RUSSIA'S TIME-TESTED PARTNER; throughout
many years, the Soviet Union and India were almost allies and co-
operated practically in all spheres of human activity.
Today, India is a country that created nuclear weapons and nuclear
reactors, put a satellite into Mars orbit and is working on space
travels on India-made spaceships.
Its science-intensive branches, information technologies in the
first place, are rapidly developing. The IT segment of its economy
is from $80 to 90 billion; the country occupies about 18.5% of
the world software market. This made India one of the outsourc-
ing platforms - in 2015, software export from India was estimated
at $112 billion, or 8% of GDP5; it has found its niche in world economy and became confident
of its ability to profit from economic globalization.
Economic successes, however, have not solved the problems that slow down India's progress. It
is dependent on oil imports; it suffers of deficit of electric power and of very limited water re-
sources.
INDIA'S FOREIGN POLICY has not changed much after the 2014 elections; the consensus
of sorts among the main political parties is more than half a century old. Today, however, India
demonstrates more assertive-ness on the international scene.
From the very beginning, India has been seeking a place of its own among the world's leading
powers. For a long time, however, its international resource was limited to its moral authority
and support extended by its Asian, African and Latin American friends. By the early twenty-first
century, India acquired powerful economic, scientific, technological, and military potentials in-
dispensable for a premier league member.
RUSSIA AND INDIA, with their very different and very distinctive specifics, are facing many
similar problems both inside and outside their borders. First, they are coping with the task of
maintaining national and social harmony within the multi-million poly-ethnic and poly-confes-
sional states. Our two countries learned better and earlier than many others the lesson taught by
Cashmere and Chechnya: Aggressive nationalism, religious extremism, terrorism, and separatism
were an absolute evil. Second, they oppose the efforts to establish diktat of the West in everything
that is going on in the world and have addressed the task of building a democratic, polycentric
international order to guarantee all and each state in the West and the East, in the North and the
South peace, security, justice, and development. Today, their combined international weight made
them indispensable participants in settling international problems.
Russia and India occupy close or even identical positions on the majority of contemporary prob-
lems - liquidation of the seats of local conflicts in the neighboring countries, in the first place,
Russia-India: New Formats of Old Partnership