Roving Periscope: After POTUS Joe Biden, President Putin also praises PM Modi
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: It’s the ‘India Moment’ all over the world. The South Asian country, now the fifth biggest and the best-performing large economy, is the flavor of the season.
And India is relishing it as never before.
A week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned from his State Visits to the USA and Egypt with loads of business, praises, and promises, Russia has also stepped in just to make sure it did not stay behind in praising India.
After surviving an attempted coup over the last weekend, President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called Prime Minister Narendra Modi “a big friend” of Russia and said his ‘Make in India’ campaign has had a “truly impressive effect” on the country’s economy.
Speaking at a forum in Moscow, organized by Russia’s Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI), he said: “Our friends in India and our big friend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, launched the ‘Make in India’ initiative several years ago. It has had a truly impressive effect on the Indian economy. It would do no harm to emulate what is working well, even if it was not us but our friends who created it,” the media reported
President Putin made a case for India as he discussed the opportunities for Russian companies because of the West’s sanctions, and the need for Moscow to “offer support tools to help our companies market their products more efficiently”.
Applauding the Indian leadership for creating an effective model to develop local manufacturing capabilities and wooing foreign investors, he emphasized the need to think about “making our products more convenient and functional, with a modern look and properties.”
Industrial and product design should become an important resource for the development of domestic business, he said.
This was one of the major public appearances of President Putin, days after a Russian mercenary group launched a short-lived armed rebellion against him.
The rebellion by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group on Saturday last week marked the most serious challenge to President Putin in over two decades of his rule.
On Wednesday, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev briefed NSA Ajit Doval on the latest developments in the country following the rebellion.
PM Modi launched the ‘Make in India’ initiative in 2014, aiming to create and encourage companies to develop, manufacture and assemble products made in the country and incentivize dedicated investments into manufacturing.
Replacing China as the world’s most populated country with a population of over 1.4 billion people and emerging with the fifth largest GDP of around USD 3.7 trillion, India has in recent years surfaced not only as an alternative destination for license manufacturing for global companies but also as a massive consumer market for foreign investors.
India’s exports increased from USD 468 billion in 2014 to an estimated USD 770 billion in the 2022-23 fiscal year. Its FDI also increased from USD 36 billion in 2014 to over USD 81 billion in 2020-21.
President Putin and PM Modi last met on the sidelines of a regional security bloc, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Uzbekistan in September 2022.
