Indo-UK Relations

Background

India and the United Kingdom share close and friendly ties. It is a relationship between the largest and the oldest democracy in the world. Highlights of this relationship have been the following:

• The bilateral relationship between the two nations was upgraded to a strategic partnership in 2004 and further in 2010 the foundation for Enhanced Partnership for the Future was laid.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to UK in November 2015 took the relationship to new heights.
• The two Prime Ministers endorsed a Vision Statement.
• Both Prime Ministers resolved to hold biennial PM-level Summits to advance the partnership.
• They agreed on a new Defence and International Security Partnership aimed to intensify cooperation on defence and security, including cyber security, counter-terrorism and maritime security.
• They also endorsed a Joint Statement on Energy and Climate Change.
• They issued a Statement of Intent to scale up bilateral cooperation to a global partnership for development cooperation in third countries.
• India is the 3^rd largest source of investment in India
• UK is the largest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in India
• India and UK have already signed the civil nuclear agreement
• UK is participating in India’s Smart City Mission
• Indian Inc. forms one of the most important and influential segment in UK with names such as Jaguar of Tata Motors.
• UK is home to almost 90,000 Indian students.

News: Prime Minister Theresa May has visited India on her first bilateral trip outside Europe since Britain voted to quit the European Union. The potential of this partnership has been described as limitless.

UK needs India for

• Search of new markets post the EU exit.
• Trade opportunities with India which is one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

Areas of Cooperation

Visa Regime

• Indian business men have been offered access to UK’s registered traveller scheme.
• Indian government will be the first in the world to nominate top business executives for the specialised fast-track visa and immigration service launched in 2013.
• Preferential visas however are not being offered to the students and IT professionals.
• India’s concern is the segment of population who would be asked to return to India.
• UK concern should be to address the skill gap by allowing flexible visa policies for this category.
• India will have one of the best UK visa services of any country in the world.
• They will have access to more application points and will be the only place where one can get a same day visa.

Terrorism

• Condemned the Uri attack and emphasised on cross border terrorism.
• Issued a joint statement to purposefully work together to combat radicalism, terrorism.
• Support for strong action by international community in a joint manner.
• Ensure sharing of best practices to tackle the use of internet for spreading radical propaganda and online recruitment.
• Strong measures against those who finance, support and encourage terrorism and provide a breeding ground to terrorism.

Defence

• The Defence Consultative Group (DCG) has been tasked to advance the bilateral defence cooperation agenda.
• Build upon UK’s proposals for partnerships, through activities including military to military cooperation, training, and exchange of subject matter experts, research and technology linkages as well as defence manufacturing.
• British companies should look at multiple opportunities in the Indian defence sector.
• Other than trade in defence equipment India UK should  build partnerships with Indian companies to focus on manufacturing, technology transfer and co-development.

Legal Cooperation

• Both the nations have shown strong commitment to enhance cooperation under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty and agreed that fugitives and criminals should not be allowed to escape the law.
• India and UK have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish bilateral cooperation activities in the field of Intellectual Property to promote innovation, creativity and economic growth in both countries.
• The MoU helps in establishing a broad and flexible framework for:
• Exchange of best practices,
• cooperation on training programs,
• technical exchanges to raise awareness on intellectual property rights (IPR), and
• better protection of IPR

Science and Technology

• ‘Make in India’ will be a key aspect in the cooperation in science and technology.
• Science, technology and innovation have a significant role especially to boost entrepreneurship.
• India-UK clean energy Research and Development centre has been announced and it would be set up with a 10 million pound investment corpus.
• UK will invest Indian start-ups and also contribute for a Start-Up India Venture Capital Fund.

What is needed:

• The British Prime Minister, due to domestic politics, has assumed office on an anti-immigration and anti-free trade mandate and hence she could not adopt a tough stance on visas.
• By allowing preferential visas to High Net-worth Individuals (HNI) only, UK has missed an opportunity to bridge its own skill gap.
• The immigration issues should not be allowed to hamper relations in other areas since UK needs to realise the potential of India as a partner in post EU exit era.
• India UK goods trade is not of high volumes as the services and investment. Hence, India would like to enhance merchandise trade since it does not have to go through the EU bureaucracy now.
• Britain needs to be clear and show willingness to explore the possibility of a preferential or a free trade agreement.