Modi’s Gulf diplomacy earning rich dividends
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the United Arab Emirates last month is indeed earning the dividends such a high-level political engagement was intended to. Even as its Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan came visiting with an impressive business delegation last week, the Emirates decided to act upon the Dawood Ibrahim dossier furnished by India last month. Arguably, the oil-rich Gulf has been long nurtured by the West — read the United States — despite the latter's apprehensions about a nuclear Iran, political instability in the region, and America's obvious proximity to Israel.
The Modi Government's resolve to similarly prioritise India's strategic and energy security concerns in the Gulf region is writ large on New Delhi's decision to look beyond the Pakistani prism that has hitherto skewed India's approach. Mr Modi's visit, the first by an Indian Prime Minister in 34 years, is a welcome recognition of the changed geopolitical context of the current decade where energy security is as crucial a concern as growing Islamic radicalism which threatens both the Arab and the non-Arab world. Admittedly, the UAE is a crucial component of India's energy security plans. Conservative estimates put India's share of the global oil demand at five per cent by the end of this decade. Given that India imports 70 per cent of its crude oil from the region, it must step up its presence here; Mr Modi's visit is a significant footprint in that direction. Energy security apart, India is also looking to tap the immense foreign currency reserves of the Gulf kingdoms for infrastructure investment, a concern reigning supreme in Mr Modi's vision of a developed India.
Yet another area of synergy is the alarming rise of Islamic radicalism in the Gulf region. The traditional conflict areas — between Iran and Israel, Shias and Sunnis, Islamic and non-Islamic — no longer compel India, as indeed the West, to take maximalist positions. As terror and instability move across political divides with alarming ease, the growing influence of the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood is driving like-minded countries, Arab and non-Arab, to the need to evolve a comprehensive counter that best protects the economic, energy and strategic interests of countries with credible stakes in the region.
For India, these stakes multiply manifold owing to the eight million odd Indian workers whose remittances amount to $50 billion per annum. Of late, India has incurred phenomenal costs evacuating its citizens from politically volatile pockets in Kuwait, Iraq and Yemen. While the Modi Government's outreach helped reassure the expat community, it also underlined the need for a multilateral mechanism to deal with possible instabilities in the future. Given the volatility of the region, cooperation with the Gulf countries on security, intelligence exchange and anti-terror mechanisms would lend much-needed strategic depth to India's engagement in the region. With the UAE's due acknowledgement of the synergies available, India's Gulf narrative seems set for its most robust phase yet.