The year 2023 was undoubtedly a big year for India. It marked India projecting that it has well and truly arrived as a major global power in its own right.
From the successful hosting of the G20, to landing on the Moon and being at the centre of a new Europe-Middle East trade corridor, Delhi has continued to demonstrate its criticality as a key swing power. It also demonstrated its role as a leader of the so-called global South, the concentration of developing countries that were colonised by European powers between the 1700s and the 1960s.
Controversies also abounded as tensions rose between India and Anglophone powers such as Canada and the US over the activities of Khalistani operatives on their soil. However, the positives far outweigh the negatives.
UK-India ties on the up
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan in May. The two men agreed to expedite the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and the UK, which is currently under negotiations. India-UK trade is robust at £38.3bn in 2023 so far.
India invests £9.3bn in the UK, a figure that will surely rise as more Indian companies look to invest in the UK. Despite its rapid economic growth, India remains relatively capital poor but has a large labour force, while the UK enjoys abundant capital and technology. A potent economic partnership between the two countries makes sense, especially as given the large size of the Indian diaspora there is ample scope for further growth and prosperity. India is still only the UK’s 12th largest trading partner, which also suggests room for further upgradation in business ties. “Let’s keep raising our sights and let’s keep scoring boundaries at this partnership,” Sunak said at the India Global Forum’s celebration event of UK-India week at 10 Downing Street in June 2023, using a cricket metaphor to underline strengthening bilateral ties.
Being able to host Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Delhi for the G20 Summit in September 2023, where he demonstrated his cultural roots in India and his Hindu faith, was a further positive for India. India-UK ties remain on a great upswing. Security ties between the two countries also remains strong, as the UK’s latest security review, the Integrated Review Refresh mentions India as a key security partner going forward. One potential roadblock for closer ties will be the UK’s forthcoming restrictions on immigration, which will hit Indian professionals and students hard.
The coming year 2024 will show whether India and the UK can reduce the impact of immigration restrictions.
Chandrayaan-3: Making history in space
A historic world first, as India successfully landed on the dark side of the moon, to become the first country to land on the south pole of the Moon in the culmination of the Chandrayaan-3 mission in August 2023.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission included an Indian Moon orbiter and landing rover, which was a great cause of national pride. The potential of water and other useful elements on the lunar surface such as helium could be very useful for humanity in future, in establishing Moon bases and colonies.
So, India is contributing to global scientific advancement. Such an event would have been seen as fantastic science fiction only 50 years ago, showing the progress India has made in the past nine years.
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G20 Summit: India as key swing power
The much-anticipated G20 Summit of the world’s 20 biggest economies in September was a major diplomatic success for India, amidst a trying international environment, with divisions between countries over the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Western world, which is allied with Ukraine against Russia, wanted a more robust and expansive criticism of Russia in the final G20 statement.
However, India succeeded in getting a more watered-down statement that called for peace and restraint without explicitly condemning Russia, which was another demonstration of the rising influence of India as a leader of the Global South. Power and influence are not the same thing. A nation can be powerful in economic and military terms, without having any real influence or ability to change the thinking of other power centres.
This is clearly not the case for India, which increasingly has demonstrated the ability to get what it wants at international forums over the past few years, despite not being a fully-fledged permanent member of the UN Security Council.
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India-Middle East-Europe Corridor
Delhi is seen as a critical power centre in the Middle East, especially in the aftermath of the revelation of the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC), that was revealed at the G20 Summit.
IMEC is a proposed trade link spanning Europe, West Asia, and India potentially worth trillions of dollars in the future, so its success is an essential element of Indian foreign policy going forward, and of course there is incentive for key players such as Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia to see it succeed.
It may also open the way for more Indian workers in the Mid-East in future, enabling trade with India to potentially underpin parts of any future Arab-Israel peace deals, which may follow the Israel-Hamas war.
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Anti-India extremism
A potential hiccup in the growth of Indian ties with the West could prove to be the ongoing controversy regarding India’s role in alleged assassination plots against senior Khalistani extremist figures in the West.
In September, Canada accused India of an alleged involvement in the killing of Khalistani leader Hardeep Nijjar. Months later, in November, the US claimed it had unearthed an Indian plot against Khalistani activist Gurpatwant Pannun, whom India has designated a terrorist. India has contested these allegations and instituted relevant reviews.
The Khalistani separatist movement caused the deaths of thousands of Indian citizens in the 1980s, besides blowing up an Indian airliner, all of which is too often swept under the rug by Western media and politicians.
These events are unlikely to derail India-US ties, which are driven by powerful business considerations as well as the need for a potent partnership to deter China. PM Modi’s June visit to the US was a substantial success, yielding billions of dollars in trade and technology transfer deals.
Rewind
In many ways, the year 2023 will go down in history as having signalled to the world a more confident and assertive India that will leverage its diaspora’s power on the road to growth.
The country promises to remain one of the world’s most promising economic bright spots as we step into the New Year.
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Jeevan Vipinachandran is a UK-based writer and political analyst specialising in political conflict and counter-terrorism. With a Masters in Comparative Politics: Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics (LSE), his core interest is in international relations with a special focus on the rise of India and its impact on the world stage.