By Prof. Swaran Singh
Anthony Albanese this week makes his first trip to India since becoming prime minister
After German Chancellor Olaf Sholz on February 25-26 and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on March 2-3, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is to arrive in India on Wednesday for a four-day visit.
This will see his large delegation – comprising senior ministers, officials and 27 business leaders of higher education, finance, mining, aviation, health, energy, defense and architecture – traveling to Ahmedabad and Mumbai and returning home after the India-Australia prime ministers’ summit in New Delhi.
As if to preset the mood and momentum of the visit, last week saw Australian Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, Education Minister Jason Clare and Foreign Minister Penny Wong in New Delhi rubbing shoulders with their counterparts.
While the education ministers discussed clearing of pending education visas and signed an agreement for mutual recognition of qualifications and for Australian universities to open campuses in India, Foreign Minister Wong attended a Group of Twenty meeting, a Quad meeting, a few bilateral meetings, and New Delhi’s Raisina Dialogue, where she called India a “critical great power.”
Mood and momentum
Keeping in line with this foreshadowing, Prime Minister Albanese arrives on Holi, India’s festival of colors, for fun and frolic followed by an evening of lighting bonfires signifying the victory of good over evil.
On this first day, he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take some time out from their ceremonial, festive and official engagement to watch the fourth match of the ongoing India-Australia men’s test series of cricket at the world’s largest stadium, which has a seating capacity of 132,000 and is named after Modi.
Thursday will see the large Australian delegation visiting Mumbai, the financial capital of India. Led by Trade and Tourism Minister Don Farrell and the minister of resources and Northern Australia, Madeleine King, these delegations, among others, will participate in an Australia-India CEO Forum to negotiate business-to-business deals under the framework of the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement that was signed last April.
India as of now is the sixth-largest trading partner of Australia and in 19th position in the list of the 20 top investors in that country. But this means there remains enormous space to cover.
On Friday, New Delhi will host the annual summit under the India-Australia Strategic Partnership that was upgraded to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in June 2020, reflecting the recent upswing in bilateral relations.
This has been further bolstered since the 2017 revival of the Quadrilateral Security Framework that is committed to ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific region, where their shared China challenge has brought India and Australia even closer.
But it is also true that their forward momentum has faced headwinds in the form of disruptions and disjunctions triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war. For example, this will be the first India visit by an Australian prime minister since 2017 and the first visit ever by Anthony Albanese as prime minister. Does this mean that both sides must keep their expectations pragmatic and stay ready for more hiccups in coming times?
For example, Adani Group, India’s largest investor in Australia, has recently come under rough weather. What outcomes and trajectories then can be expected?
Shared China challenge
Before his departure from Sydney, Albanese underlined that his India visit aimed at “deepening and diversifying our international investments and trade links,” which clearly referenced Australia’s strained relations with China, a country that has been Australia’s largest trading partner since 2007 and its largest export destination since 2009.
But since 2020 China and Australia have been at loggerheads and, in spite of their recent diplomatic thaw, their trade war shows little sign of relenting, pushing Canberra to explore alternative partners.
Indeed, both Australia and India have had China as their largest trading partner but both have also experienced increased tensions with Beijing. This has coincided with, and perhaps contributed to, both becoming increasingly committed to ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific, which has further reinforced their sense of a shared China challenge.
The two countries coming together in the Quadrilateral Security Framework has seen them working closer together in several critical sectors, including joint naval exercises that saw India finally agreeing to Australia joining the Malabar event. The two are now talking of security and defense cooperation.
Energy is now seen as another critical connect in the making, though India has been a major investor in Australian coal mines. Given Australia’s ambitions to emerge as renewable energy superpower by 2030 and India projected to see an exponential growth in its energy consumption, this portends both exploring new partnerships.
This again makes China their major point of convergence. China is reported to have the world’s fourth-largest lithium reserves after Bolivia, Argentina and Australia, but China, with its major investments at home and in Argentina, has come to be world’s third-largest lithium exporter; and it owns 55% of the world market in the chemical lithium required for electric-vehicle batteries.
China’s designs to invest in and control various rare-earth minerals outside its borders has added to the sense of complementarity between New Delhi and Canberra. This makes Australia critical for India’s goals of achieving 50% renewable energy and 30% electric vehicles by 2030.
Only last week Canberra blocked the China-linked Yuxiao Fund’s proposal to increase its stake in one of Australia’s strategic rare-earths producers. And back in 2018, Canberra banned China’s Huawei from participating in its fifth-generation (5G) telecom networks.
Conversely, among several other memoranda of understanding (MoUs) and agreements to be signed during Albanese’s visit, India’s Khanij Bidesh India Ltd is set to announce a “significant investment” in Australia’s critical minerals.
Persistent irritants
It is true that India-Australia bonhomie has become robust and visible and a large number of people of Indian origin in Australia have reached senior positions in Australian companies and institutions. It is also true that in 2021 the expat community overtook the Chinese to become Australia’s fastest-growing major diaspora.
Nevertheless, issues of discrimination, even racism, have occasionally come to the surface as a simmering irritant for both sides. Newly assertive India has to find innovative ways to redress avoidable friction points that threaten to dwarf their potential for working together.
Recent months, for example, witnessed vandalization of Hindu temples in Melbourne and Brisbane, suspected to be the doing of supporters of the Khalistan movement. Led by Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), which is banned in India, this group has sought to hold Khalistan referenda in Australia, Canada, Italy, Switzerland and elsewhere.
In July 2019, India banned the SFJ on grounds of secessionism, but it has lately issued threats to disrupt India’s international events like G20 meetings, and parts of Punjab have lately begun witnessing increased visibility of what are being called the Khalistan 2.0 sympathizers.
In anticipation that these irritants will come up for discussion by the two prime ministers, Australian High Commissioner in New Delhi Barry O’Farrell on Monday sought to douse the fire by underlining his country’s “unwavering” respect for India’s sovereignty, saying that in Australia, the right to freedom of speech “does not cover those engaging in hate speech, vandalism or violence.”
Earlier as well, India has conveyed to Australia its concerns, asking for “suitable action” against vandalism and anti-India propaganda. And, if India’s recent interactions with world leaders is any indication, a firm mention of India’s expectations will be perfectly on the expected lines during this week’s visit.
O’Farrell’s strong condemnation of such acts in Australia and his energetic defense of his country’s commitment to India on the eve of Albanese’s visit lays the ground for addressing the irritants beyond their closed-door parleys. But whether Albanese will strongly condemn such actions in Australia while he is on Indian soil remains to be seen.
Originally published: AisaTimes, March 07, 2023.
Posted in SIS Blog with the authorization of the author.
Prof. Swaran Singh is is visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute in Calgary, Alberta, and professor of diplomacy and disarmament at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India