India and the United Kingdom appear to be entering a new era multi-faceted cooperation, given the renewed vigor of the former’s economic growth trajectory and the latter’s impending exit from the European Union. Both countries have been historically linked with their shared commitments towards democracy, peace and stability. In addition to that, the relationship between both countries has been characterised by a vibrant range of educational, institutional, cultural and legal complementarities.
In the past five years, the Indian government has set in motion a multitude of programmes designed to boost the country’s economic growth and alleviate poverty. These include the Jan Dhan Yojana, the Make in India Mission, the Smart Cities Mission, the Digital India campaign and so on. The state has also attempted to improve the regulatory frameworks to encourage investments and businesses.
All these have opened up potential avenues of collaboration between the UK and India. These include the possibility of developing agreements of bilateral cooperation or a comprehensive economic cooperation agreement, which negate the sticking points underlying the success of India’s Free Trade Agreement with the European Union and broadens the scope of partnership. The UK could also relax the investment regime in the country in order to facilitate the mobility of high-skilled professional labour and consequent, fund inflows from India.
The UK needs to demonstrate to the world, especially India, its commitment towards attracting the best global talents and businesses in a post-BREXIT scenario (education, work permits, regulations, visa etc.) Within this context, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is positive that BREXIT offers positive opportunities of engagement for India. The 2019 Grant Thorton-CII tracker has highlighted that Indian companies employ almost 1,05,000 people, thereby, busting the flawed perception that India is stealing jobs.
Another aspect of the changing relations between UK and India is the latter’s rapid progression towards a knowledge-led and knowledge-driven economy, grounded in the Indian proclivities towards frugal innovation, technological solutions and entrepreneurship. Within this context, UK could contribute immensely with its leadership in designing systems related to infrastructure, e-governance, data analysis, innovation and technology.
Given that Prime Minister Modi holds a positive outlook towards India-UK relations, coupled with the fact that enterprises of both countries have vested interests in the consolidation of deeper economic synergies, India and the UK could potentially develop multiple policy and trade instruments to address the development needs of the former and business needs of the latter, with widespread implications for the bilateral economic relations.
India Outbound
May 29, 2019
source https://indiaoutbound.org/the-potential-invigoration-of-india-uk-ties/
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