India’s multi-faceted bilateral relationship with the UK has intensified over the past few years, specially since the upgradation of India-UK relationship to strategic partnership in 2004. The UK is an important interlocutor in the bilateral, EU, G8 and global contexts. The UK supports India’s inclusion in UNSC as a permanent member.
Recent India-UK Summits
2. There have been regular exchanges of visits at the Prime Minister-level. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh visited the UK on 19-20 September 2004 and met PM Tony Blair. During the visit, the two Prime Ministers adopted a Joint Declaration titled 'India-UK: Towards a new and dynamic partnership' which envisages annual Summits and meetings between Foreign Ministers. It also outlined areas for future cooperation in civil nuclear energy, space, defence, combating terrorism, economic ties, science and technology, education and culture.
3. The former PM Tony Blair mooted the idea of India joining G-8 discussions. At his invitation, PM Dr. Manmohan Singh visited the UK on 7-8 July 2005 for the “G-8 Plus 5” Gleneagles Summit (India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico).
4. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair visited India on 6-8 September 2005 in his capacity as EU President for the EU/ India Summit on September 7, and also for the bilateral Summit held on September 8 in Udaipur. The two leaders exchanged views on a range of bilateral, regional and multilateral issues. The UK recognized the need for a supportive international environment for meeting India’s energy requirements and agreed to take forward cooperation with India in the civilian nuclear energy sector. PM Blair reaffirmed his commitment to India’s candidature for permanent membership of the expanded UN Security Council. He expressed understanding that India was 'ringed' by a number of trouble spots and urged a regular dialogue on regional issues. The two sides agreed on the need to strengthen cooperation against terrorism. The two sides signed agreements on air services (substantially increasing direct flights between the two countries), cooperation in the field of hydrocarbons, on sustainable development and films co-production. PM Dr. Manmohan Singh announced that India would fund a Chair at the Judge Business School in Cambridge in honour of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru. The Chair has since been set up. PM Blair announced a £ 10 million UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI). An India-UK Business Summit was also organized simultaneously with the main Summit.
5. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh visited UK in October 2006 for the third annual India-U.K. Summit. Following discussions on a host of bilateral, regional and multilateral issues, the two leaders told a press conference that their nations enjoyed strong co-operation on business and education and on tackling terrorism and climate change.
6. UK PM Gordon Brown visited India on January 21, 2008. During the visit, the two sides issued a joint statement on India-UK Strategic Partnership in which they agreed on the importance of more representative and effective international institutions to address global challenges; UK reaffirmed its firm support for India’s candidature for a permanent membership in an expanded UNSC; to cooperate in developing collaboration between small and medium enterprises, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists; to forge a closer partnership of two knowledge societies in the field of higher education; to establish a Science Bridge Initiative to build institution to institution relationship on equal partnership; the two sides expressed satisfaction over the announcement of UK-India agreement on the second phase of UK-India Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation study.
7. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh met PM Gordon Brown on April 1, 2009, on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in London. The two leaders discussed the global economic crisis and also the situation in Pakistan/Afghanistan. The two leaders again met in L’Aquila in July 2009 on the sidelines of the G-8 Summit and in Pittsburgh on 25 September on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit.
Foreign Minister level visits
8. The then EAM Shri Pranab Mukherjee visited UK in 2007 and 2008. UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, visited India in January 2009. The last meeting between EAM Shri S.M Krishna and UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband took place in Trieste on 25 June 2009.
Other visits
9. Ministerial visits have been taking place at regular intervals. In recent months, from Indian side, Finance Minister Sh. Pranab Mukherjee, Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas Sh. Murli Deora, Minister of Civil Aviation Shri Praful Patel, Minister of Road, Transport & Highways Sh. Kamal Nath, Commerce and Industry Minister Shri Anand Sharma and Minister of Law and Justice Sh. Veerappa Moily have visited UK. The recent important visits from the UK side are visits of Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Secretary of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Lord Peter Mandelson in January 2009, joint visit of DFID Minister Douglas Alexander and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband in August, Trade Minister Lord Mervyn Davis and Climate Change Minister Lord Hunt in September. Lord Mayor is on a visit to India from 19-23 October 2009.
Parliamentary Exchanges
10. Parliamentary linkages have been strengthened through regular visits. All three Friends of India Groups from UK Parliament have undertaken visits to India at the invitation of the Indian Government. There have been other parliamentary exchanges including regular exchanges which take place under the banner of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
Bilateral mechanisms for political consultations
11. Foreign Office Consultations (FOC) are held regularly. The last round of FOC was held on 6th February 2009 in London.
Economic and Commercial Relations
12. India and the UK are engaged in mutually profitable and significant bilateral trade and investment partnerships for both countries. Bilateral economic linkages have strengthened through increased trade and investment flows. UK is India's second largest trading partner in Europe. Two-way bilateral trade has shown an impressive growth. Total trade (in goods and services) is around £ 12 billion. The UK’s exports to India were up almost 30% in 2008 to £5.9bn while imports were up 17% in 2008 to £6.2bn (UK figures). The export basket from India has undergone substantial diversification and more than 50% of India’s exports now constitute non-traditional and hi-tech goods like petroleum products, engineering products and pharma products.
13. There have been 108 inward investment projects into UK from India taking India to the second place next only to the US in the league of overseas investors in the UK in terms of number of projects. The UK is the most preferred nation for investments by India Inc. in 2008 so far, accounting deals worth $6 billion. (Till Aug’08). Indian companies secured 20, 000 jobs in the UK in 2008, which is the 2nd highest number of jobs secured by a foreign employer in the UK (This includes Tata's £1.15bn acquisition of Jaguar/Land Rover last year which secured 14,000 jobs).
14. UK is the third largest investor in India. There are 600 UK companies in India. Top sectors attracting FDI inflows from U.K. are power, oil & gas, telecom and service industries.
15. An India-UK Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) was set up in 2005 to tackle trade and investment barriers on both sides and promote business links. The Committee has held regular meetings, last in January 2009. The India-UK Financial Dialogue was launched in January 2007 with a view to exchange views on bilateral and global financial issues. The last meeting was held in August 2008. The first India-UK Investment Summit took place in London in 2006 and the second in India in 2008.
Information Technology
16. India and UK have emerged as major partner countries in the Information Technology sector. A large number of Indian IT companies have substantial operations in the UK. NASSCOM opened its UK chapter in 2003, its first such overseas office. It has a Memorandum of Understanding with its British counterpart trade association and also with the Welsh Development Agency.
Energy
17. UK companies are major players in the oil and gas sector in India, which is open to foreign investors. Some UK companies have done well in the market-e.g.: Cairn India has a major project in Rajasthan that came on-stream in August 2009 that should generate 20% of India’s future oil production. UK majors like BG, BP and Shell are well entrenched in the Indian market. Most of the major UK service and equipment providers including Schlumberger, Subsea7-Technip, MCS, JP Kearney, etc are also working in India. Shri Murli Deora, Petroleum Minister visited UK in September 2009 to attract bids for the 8th round of NELP in India.
Education
18. India is the second source of students to UK and the number of Indian students is approximately 31,000 (UK figures). UK universities are approaching students from small towns in India besides the four metropolitan cities. Over 14 UK Universities have opened full-time offices in India. Indian Chairs have been set up at several UK universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, London School of Economics, etc.
19. Cooperation in the education sector has intensified since the visit of PM Brown to India in January 2008. During the visit, an MoU was signed on India-UK Higher Education Leadership Development Programme. UK committed to assist India in setting up one new IIT, one new Indian Institute of Science, education and research, and one new Central University during the 11th Five Year Plan. Both sides agreed to establish a programme under UKIERI to support faculty development in key Indian universities with participation of leading UK academics. To facilitate cooperation in the educational sector, both sides agreed to establish an Education Forum to work towards an early conclusion of an Education Partnership Agreement. Prime Minister Gordon Brown committed offering more scholarships and assistance to DFID (£825 million for health and education projects) to train 300,000 teachers in English language and subsequent setting up of India-UK Education Forum. There has been substantial progress on these initiatives. The Education Forum has met in September 2008 and is meeting again in October-November this year. The UKIERI programme is doing well. It has around 100 HE research projects, 230 schools collaborating on joint projects, 17 joint projects in Professional and technical skills and 23 projects between institutions in the UK and India for joint programme delivery. Research Council’s UK has commitment to establish a new office in Delhi in June 2008 to promote collaborative research and innovation that will build on collaboration initiated by UKIERI. Significant progress has been made on the three proposals to collaborate for the establishment of one new IIT in Ropar, Punjab, Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) in Pune and one Central University in the 11th Five Year Plan.
Science & Technology
20. Cooperation in this field was given a new orientation with the setting up of “Science and Innovation Council (SIC)” at the Ministerial Level with the involvement of eminent scientists/experts as Members. An India UK Cooperation Agreement for Joint Initiative on Solar Energy was signed between Department of Science & Technology (DST), New Delhi and Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), UK. Under the agreement, it has been agreed by both sides to invite the joint project proposals in the area of Solar Energy. For the initial call, EPSRC has made a provision of 5 million pound and DST has agreed to provide the matching grant.
Tourism
21. A rapidly growing number of British tourists and business people visit India every year and UK ranks number two in the world in terms of UK tourists visiting India. India received 521,000 tourists from the UK in 2008. Around 500,000 Indians visit UK every year.
Air Services
22. India and UK signed agreements in September 2004 and April 2005 to increase the number of civil air services. In September 2005, a new bilateral Air Services Agreement was signed to further streamline and enhance cooperation in this sector. There are 108 flights operating between India and UK per week with a maximum capacity of 29,200 seats. Indian private operator Jet Airways and Kingfisher have begun operations to London.
Culture
23. The Nehru Centre is the cultural outreach of the High Commission of India in UK. Established in 1992, it is among the most active of India’s cultural centres abroad and has emerged as a premier institution engaged in India’s cultural interface with UK.
24. Indian art and culture has been showcased in London through some important exhibitions in recent months. Indian musical instruments were documented & displayed at the Horniman Museum in a unique exhibition (February- November 2008). The British Library hosted an exhibition on the Ramayana (May – Sept 2008). The British Museum organised an exhibition titled ‘Garden & Cosmos’ focussed on Rajasthan in the summer of 2009, while the Victoria and Albert Museum hosted an exhibition on the Maharajas of India from 10 October 2009.
Indian community
25. Of Britain’s population of 59.8 million, the population of Indian origin is estimated to be around 1.5 million, accounting for the single largest segment of ethnic population. Over 40% of them live in inner and outer London. Outside London, Indian community is mainly concentrated in West and East Midlands, Leicester and Greater Manchester. People of Indian origin enjoy increasing respect on account of their achievements in the filed of entrepreneurship, education, science and technology and in other fields. Majority of the second generation have opted for higher education and are in white collar professions like doctors, engineers, solicitors, chartered accountants, etc. Seven Non Resident Indian (NRI) youths have made it to a list of the most successful young millionaire entrepreneurs in UK. The present Parliament has six MPs of Indian origin and twenty Peers in the House of Lords. In addition, there are over 100 Indian origin Councillors in Councils across UK.
(October 2009)
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