With external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee’s recent visit, foreign policy pundits have started speculating the future of India-Australia relations. This is the first visit by an Indian minister to Australia in the past three years, and the two countries have pledged to work together on economic and security issues. Pacts on defence and intelligence dialogue, extradition of criminals and combating terrorism have been inked during Mukherjee’s visit, as well as a deal on annual ministerial-level dialogue. Interestingly, until 1990, apart from cricket and ‘commonwealth’ ties, Australia and India barely mattered to each other, mainly because of Cold War power politics. Today they are closer than ever. Shane Warne proudly plays for Rajasthan Royals, Brett Lee’s Hindi songs are popular amongst Indians, Steve Waugh’s ‘Udayan’ is a household name in Kolkata and Australia has 230,000 Indians; 9th largest community there. From a dismal 2840.5 million Australian dollars in 2000-2001, bilateral trade has risen to 10.75 billion, and has been growing at a whopping 40 per cent in recent years.As an emerging giant, India fits in well with Australia’s strategic calculus, which also supports India’s claim for a permanent seat in United Nations Security Council, as well as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organisation, when the moratorium on membership ends in 2010. Australia wants India to be a part of the Asia Pacific community, an organisation proposed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, which intends to involve the US, China, Australia, Japan and India.This idea could be Rudd’s alternate to the ‘quadrilateral alliance’ — Shinzo Abe’s initiative, endorsed by the Howard government involving Australia, Japan and India along with USA to forestall China’s rise in Asia. He believes in constructive engagement, that it is not prudent for the ‘four democracies’ of Asia to balance China. India has also shown its unwillingness to be dragged into such balance of power politics. Recently, Australia vetoed India’s participation in yearly trilateral security talks between Japan, USA and Australia. Clearly, Canberra doesn’t want to strengthen its ties with India at the cost of China.Both countries have common interests on a range of issues such as the nuclear disarmament agenda. While India is reviewing ‘Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan for Disarmament’ which has completed twenty years, Australia wants India to join an international commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.The Indian Ocean region holds significance for both countries, which are assisting each other in maintaining secure trade and communication routes.However, there are many thorny issues like Australian uranium supply to India. Australia under Howard supported India’s quest for nuclear energy, but the stand has changed with the changed government. Canberra denied ‘yellowcake’ to India in January 2008, when India’s special envoy Shyam Saran went to Canberra to lobby Australia for nuclear energy cooperation. The Rudd government has stuck to the global non-proliferation regime and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. India has not signed the NPT yet and Australia is wary of this. Australia’s reaction to the Indian nuclear test in 1998 was the first and amongst the strongest in the world. Canberra went to the extent of withdrawing its defence advisor from New Delhi. Not signing the NPT cannot be accepted as a substantial argument as India has behaved pretty responsibly on nuclear issues ever since it became a de-facto nuclear weapon state. India has been abiding by the NPT norms in spirit despite not signing it. Moreover selling uranium to China while turning down the Indian proposal came as a surprise to India and opposition parties in Australia too, which is why many believe India has been discriminated against. Canberra officially accepted that Beijing’s proliferation record has gone down in recent years, though China has not only been sharing nuclear secrets with Pakistan, but allegedly with Iran, North Korea and Libya also, thereby violating the Article I of the NPT provision. Uranium sales to China will begin in 2010 and Australia will supply 20,000 metric tons of uranium every year. Now, after many months of vacillating, Australia says uranium sales to India may happen provided India gets through the nuclear pact with the US and satisfies international safeguards. It is vital that India works with Australia on the nuclear front as it commands around 40 per cent of the world’s total uranium resources. Nuclear cooperation would certainly help India meet its energy requirements — 800,000 MW of energy is needed by 2032 and fossil fuel will not be sufficient.In the absence of assured supply of uranium, India’s energy generation will increasingly become carbon emitting. Australia could contribute to environment protection through uranium supply to India. Given Australia’s growing strategic and economic importance, India needs to create a more robust relationship. There is tremendous scope for cooperation in agriculture, ocean technology and other such areas. Greater use of track two and three diplomacy is yet to be done. The onus now lies on both India and Australia as to what they make out of the relationship, a flashy ‘twenty-twenty encounter’ or a ‘lasting test match’ as suggested by the Australian Foreign minister Stephen Smith. The writer is a Fellow, Australia-India Council
