Britain Needs India More Today Than India Needs Britain

In a reversal of roles, Britain needs India more today than India needs Britain.

- TR Gopaalakrishnan

Even as Britain sets in motion the legal and political pro-cesses to formally leave the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May has called for snap general elections on June 8. The decision, she said, was taken to “make a success of Brexit”. The announcement came at a time when the government was reaching out to various countries, including India. In fact, there has been a procession of high level visits by British political and business leaders to India in recent weeks. After May came to India on her first bilateral trip outside Europe, there have been visits by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon besides visits by business delegations. Recently, virtually every top British minister was out of the UK—May was in Saudi Arabia, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in Brussels and the chancellor in India, with even the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan making a European sojourn with a plea to Europe “not to penalise Britons” for Brexit.

What Britain is hoping to get out of all these visits is unclear. “The Indians were unfailingly polite and perhaps flattered by the attention,” wrote Vincent Cable, a Liberal Democrat and former business secretary in David Cameron's coalition government. Having had first-hand experience in talking to the Indian government and business leaders when he was part of at least four British delegations to India, Cable was scathing in his comments: “The British government is failing to take the hint that the Indian authorities are not going to succumb to wooing for a bilateral trade deal.”