As has become the norm in countries with large Indian diasporas, this week’s visit to Australia by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was more a festival than a diplomatic exchange. Alongside meetings with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and business leaders, there was an event at Melbourne’s Docklands Stadium, which attracted 35,000 people, and included music and dancing alongside speeches by Modi, Albanese, and Victoria’s premier, Jacinta Allan.
Such events are part of India’s soft power projection, and a way for Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to cultivate links within (and attract donations from) diaspora communities. But these events are also increasingly seen by Australian politicians as a way of gaining support among Indian Australians, who have rapidly become Australia’s largest foreign-born group. They are now an electorally significant force.
Yet among such showmanship and politicking there was serious bilateral engagement being conducted as well. Rather than producing a single headline announcement, Modi’s visit delivered a coordinated package of agreements spanning defense, economic security, energy, education, science, technology, and cultural links. Taken together, these agreements demonstrate that the relationship between the two countries is now reaching a level of institutionalization that has previously eluded them.
Given the increasingly fragile global environment, security cooperation was the centerpiece of these agreements. The new Joint Declaration on Defense and Security Cooperation was presented as a “step-change” in bilateral ties, with the two countries agreeing to establish an Annual Defense Ministers’ Dialogue, deepen interoperability between their armed forces, and expand military exercises under the Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement. There was also a commitment to expanding defense industrial collaboration, defense science and technology, military education, wargaming, and exchanges of military personnel.
With both countries keen to be major security providers in the Indian Ocean, maritime security was a core feature of these new arrangements. The two prime ministers announced an India-Australia Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap to strengthen information sharing, capability development, and operational coordination, as well as a Memorandum of Understanding between Australia’s Maritime Border Command and the Indian Coast Guard that will support cooperation at sea.
The second major pillar of the visit was enhancing economic engagement. Building upon Canberra’s New Roadmap for Australia’s Economic Engagement with India, the two governments identified clean energy, education and skills, agribusiness, and tourism as key growth sectors, alongside the opportunities in defense technology.
Pivotal to this is the trade in critical minerals and maintaining supply chain resilience. Recognizing that India has an expanding industrial base – and Australia’s abundance of raw materials – the two governments committed to greater cooperation in downstream processing and advanced manufacturing, seeking to shift the dominance of these markets away from China.
Against the backdrop of continued instability in the Middle East, Canberra and New Delhi have also sought to find ways to create greater energy resilience. For energy hungry India, essential to this was finalizing arrangements that would enable Australia to export uranium to India under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. Although the two countries signed a Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy agreement in 2014, no commercial-scale uranium exports have been delivered to India. All barriers to these exports now look to be cleared.
The finalizing of uranium export processes is far more than just a commercial transaction. Australia previously restricted uranium exports only to countries with strong non-proliferation commitments. India’s status outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was therefore a major obstacle. Canberra’s decision to disregard this status is therefore a symbol of the trust that it now has in New Delhi.
This trust has been born not only from the geopolitical realities that have brought the two countries closer in their strategic understanding of the world, but through increased people-to-people links. Defense and economic ties require social foundations. These exchanges not only come through Australia’s burgeoning diaspora, but through cooperation in education, science, and technology and the ability for universities and research institutions to expand their collaborations.
Taken together, the swathe of agreements signed during Modi’s visit reflect a holistic conception of national security where each component is both interconnected and critical to the advancement of the others. Rather than announcing a single major initiative – as is the norm on such visits – Modi’s trip to Melbourne demonstrated the web of institutional cooperation that now comprises the Australia-India relationship. The package of agreements were designed to showcase that both governments increasingly view one another not simply as important bilateral partners, but as long-term strategic partners whose cooperation spans almost every major area of national policy.
