The strategic partnership between India, Asia’s number three economy, and Germany, Europe’s number one economy, is 13 years old. This is virtually a generation. It is time for the two countries to take their bilateral relationship to a higher gear. And Prime MinisterManmohan Singh’s just-concluded bilateral visit to Germany (10 -12 April) may have paved the way for achieving that goal.
Before we turn a laser beam focus on the PM’s visit to Germany, let us talk about a new trend marking major foreign powers’ bilateral engagement with India. Increasingly we are seeing foreign powers trying to emulate the Japan model in being a part of India’s infrastructure growth story. Japan has been doing it on a sustained basis for over a decade by changing the face of Indian infrastructure through some very highly successful and capital-intensive projects like Delhi Metro and Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC).
The difference now is that the foreign powers are of late wooing India by adopting the sector-by-sector approach in boosting India’s infrastructure, something that is both appealing and highly effective for India.
British Prime Minister David Cameron was perhaps the first foreign leader to focus on a sector-by-sector approach to woo India when he visited in February this year. Cameron unveiled a novel idea to push Indo-British cooperation: develop new cities and districts along a 1000-km-long Mumbai-Bangalore corridor which would generate investment projects worth $25 billion. He said forecasts showed 5.8% of India’s population growth would be in the proposed corridor, contributing 11.8% of the country’s GDP growth by 2020.
A similar trend is discernible in the German outlook for India if one makes a careful reading of the Joint Statement on “Further Development of the Strategic and Global Partnership between Germany and India” released on 11 April after Manmohan Singh’s delegation-level talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The document makes a specific reference to the DMIC project, a $90 billion corridor of opportunities for foreign investors.
The DMIC project is a slow starter. Japan is pouring in considerable aid for this project but even that is nothing but a drop in the ocean. India has been trying to get the necessary capital by inviting more and more countries to invest in the project, including Russia. The matter was high on the Indian agenda when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India on 24 December, 2012. However, the Russians are yet to say yes or no.
India extended a similar invite to Germany and Berlin has been prompt enough to accept New Delhi’s proposal. Consider the following relevant quote from the Indo-German Joint Statement of 11 April:
“The Indian Government’s planned “Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor” (DMIC) offers ample scope for cooperation as well as a host of investment and business opportunities over the years ahead. During the Intergovernmental Consultations in May 2011 in New Delhi, vocational and educational training featured as an area of further co-operation between the two countries. India sought Germany’s cooperation in taking up a pilot project on skill development in the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. The new corridor planned between Mumbai and Bangalore likewise opens up interesting prospects for Indo-German cooperation.”
During Singh’s Germany visit the two sides also agreed to take new initiatives in the areas of trade, bilateral investment, energy, energy security, environment, culture, education, training, research, technology and defence.
A major USP of Germany for India is that it is one of the very few countries which possess cutting-edge technology and are willing to share it with India. A welcome concrete deliverable thrown up by Manmohan Singh’s visit to Germany is the two countries deciding to intensify their cooperation in hi-tech areas.
The Joint Statement makes a specific reference to the countries’ collaboration in the areas of Advanced Material Science and High Energy Physics enabled through Indian participation in the synchrotron facility at DESY and FAIR project in Germany. Another successful show of cooperation between the two sides is the implementation of industrial research and development projects through the bi-national Indo-German Science and Technology Centre.
The two sides agreed to launch a new strand of cooperation on Civil Security Research covering areas of mutual interest like natural disaster management; health outbreaks; urban security and protection and rescue of people through support for joint projects (India and Russia also inked a pact on disaster management cooperation during home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s visit to Russia that concluded on 12 April).
Germany has recently opened the German House for Research and Innovation in New Delhi to give a further boost to Indo-German cooperation in research and technology. On 11 April, the two sides agreed to jointly fund the Indo-German Centre for Sustainability (IGCS) established at IIT Madras.
“The activities of the Centre are directed towards building resilient systems in the face of climate change as well as enhance strategic knowledge in key areas of climate change. It will conduct research, technology development, training and knowledge dissemination including social and institutional barriers that can also help towards developing policy guidelines in a set of priority areas relevant to the changing climate system. The IGCS at IIT-Madras will host visiting scientists and researchers from German universities for four years under support by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research,” the Joint Statement notes.
The Germans also told the Indian Prime Minister that they were keen to assist India in setting up “Green Energy Corridors” in India through technical as well as financial development cooperation.
Actually, the Germans have already taken a baby step in this direction. The commissioning of a 70 MW solar energy project in March 2013 at Sakri, Maharashtra, built with soft credit support from the German side, is a demonstration of this German intent. The coming months should witness Germany becoming more proactively involved in India’s growth story.
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