Roadmap 2030 | Does Rishi Sunak share Boris Johnson’s commitment in furthering India-UK ties?

UK PM Rishi Sunak. (File image)

All congratulations from heads of state or government to one another are not the same. Some are unequal to others. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s victory greetings to the United Kingdom’s leader-designate Rishi Sunak on October 24 had a message within a message.

Modi congratulated Sunak within two-and-a-half hours of the latter having been certified as the sole candidate in the leadership contest for the Conservative Party. He had not yet been sworn in as the UK’s Prime Minister. He had not even gone to Buckingham Palace to meet King Charles to be invited to head ‘His Majesty’s government’. It was very different when Liz Truss defeated Sunak just over six weeks prior, and was elected to lead the UK.

There was no message from Modi, no tweet expressing similar happiness. Five days after her election, and 96 hours after Truss officially became Prime Minister, Modi called her from 7 Lok Kalyan Marg, his residence, on September 10. On the other hand, after describing Sunak as the “living bridge” of Indians in his country immediately after his election, Modi followed up the warm gesture, picked up the phone, and spoke to the Indian-origin Prime Minister two days after Sunak assumed office.

Eleven days after IK Gujral became Prime Minister, Tony Blair began his first of three tenures as the UK’s Prime Minister. Gujral thought of himself as an honorary Labourite, owing such a sentiment to his long association with the Socialist International and other movements supportive of the working class worldwide. In those pre-Internet days, the preferred mode of transmission of messages — unless they were highly sensitive — was the facsimile machine, abbreviated as fax.

Gujral so arranged his congratulatory message to the incoming Labour Party leader to land on the 10, Downing Street’s main office fax machine the moment Blair walked into the Prime Minister’s residence after taking charge. Hardeep Singh Puri, then Joint Secretary for Western Europe in the Ministry of External Affairs, was put in charge of this ‘surgical strike’ on Downing Street. The way Puri ensured that Gujral’s fax greeting was brought to Blair’s attention in the first few minutes of his entering ‘Number 10’ as its new occupant is the stuff of diplomatic legends. It is another matter that India-UK relations went into tailspin when Queen Elizabeth II visited New Delhi just six months later. The then leadership in both countries must share the blame for that diplomatic disaster. But that is another story.

The keywords in Modi’s first congratulatory message to Sunak, and during his later phone conversation, have been “Roadmap 2030”. Why are these two words important in dealings between the two prime ministers? Roadmap 2030 was adopted when Modi and then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson met virtually in May 2021 to steer bilateral co-operation for the following 10 years. Notwithstanding all the recent talk about ridding India of vestiges of colonialism, this ambitious document was based on the shared perception of the two leaders that stepped-up co-operation between London and New Delhi is a “global force for good to revive lives and livelihoods, promote peace and prosperity around the world and protect and preserve the planet for future generations.” ‘Roadmap 2030’ rests on five pillars of future partnership: health, Climate Change, people-to-people, trade and investment, and defence and security.

Johnson and Modi followed up on ‘Roadmap 2030’ less than a year later at an in-person summit in New Delhi, his first visit to India since Johnson became Prime Minister. Harsh Vardhan Shringla, then Foreign Secretary, said “the two leaders appreciated the progress achieved so far in various sectors. India-UK relations have gained a new direction and momentum”.

Modi now wants to know if Sunak is as committed to ‘Roadmap 2030’ as Johnson, in whose downfall, the young prime ministerial aspirant was instrumental. India had no doubts that Truss, who was Sunak’s predecessor altogether briefly, was determined to enhance her country’s relations with India. She amply demonstrated it as Johnson’s Foreign Secretary. India wants to persevere with ‘Roadmap 2030’, and hence it can be expected that this vision document will figure repeatedly in all high-level future conversations with Sunak’s team.

When Johnson and Modi sat down six months ago to review the progress of their joint vision, defence collaborations figured hugely on the horizon. Co-development of advanced defence technologies and co-production in specific areas — electric propulsion, fighter aircraft, jet engines, subsea radars — were discussed in uncharacteristic detail for a meeting of heads of government.

India was encouraged to do so because the recent creation of a mechanism on maritime electric propulsion was working well. For India, maritime security co-operation in the western Indian Ocean has acquired critical importance. Viewed from London, it was of serious concern that the UK’s position as the largest arms supplier to India in the decades after Independence had been whittled down and gradually to a mere three percent of the Indian defence market in the last 10 years.

India has pointed out that on sharing defence technology and intellectual property, the ball is in the UK’s court. There are still key areas where the UK denies India dual-use military-civilian technologies. Space is one such domain. Sunak could make a new start by untangling this issue. He could do so without being accused of doing the country of his ancestors any favours because there is already a model of India-United States co-operation in this sphere.

When India and the US embarked on negotiations after the 1998 nuclear tests, high technology co-operation became a priority. It took a decade to sweep away the cobwebs of mistrust over dual technology supplies, but following that model could spur India-UK engagement.