Putin's new alliance with India may have far-reaching effect

Putin's new alliance with India may have far-reaching effect
JYOTI MALHOTRA

ST. PETERSBURG, SEPTEMBER 25: Far away in the Leningrad region, Lenin's raised arm still points towards Moscow. There, that way, he seems to be saying, is the Kremlin -- less than a thousand kilometres away. The man who lives in it rules over Russia. He is the one who administers the country, now growling like a volcano, across nine international time zones. Like Lenin, he found power lying on the streets of this city and decided to pick it up. He is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

He's flying to India next week, in search of a reliable partner. Not to challenge the world or its preeminent power but perhaps to change it. He will sign the Declaration of Strategic Partnership in New Delhi on October 3, a document so far-reaching in its potential that it provides India with the opportunity to forge a direct relationship with another nuclear power, on the other side of the Atlantic.

It's easy to have flights of fancy when your hotel room overlooks themajestic Neva river, its broad sweep a silent witness to some of the mostturbulent events of history, including its renaming a decade ago to thepre-revolutionary St. Petersburg. This is the city that Peter built 300 years ago, from where Catherine ruled Russia with an iron hand, thecity of Pushkin, of the million who preferred to die in the Second World Warsiege of Leningrad than give up to the Germans. The city Moscow almostforgot about in the past decade after the Soviet Union fell apart.

But Vladimir Putin's meteoric rise during the same time, from a lowly colonel in the KGB in his Leningrad hometown to the President of Russia, is no fanciful dream. For the first time since the break-up of Soviet Union in1991, Putin's assertions of a strong state living in harmony with thecitizen's rights has not only offered a glimmer of hope to Russia'simpoverished people but also made the world sit up and listen.

As a young, relatively poor student in Leningrad, Putin is believed to have said, ``If I had some money, I would go to India.'' Indian diplomats like to tell the story about the time in the mid-1990s when as vice-mayor of St. Petersburg, he was invited by the mission here to attend a function for the release of an embassy magazine Around the World. At the function, Putin was characteristically blunt. ``The people of Russia love India but the leadership just doesn't understand it.'' Led by the man who broke up the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin, Moscow was at the time dominated by men obsessed with the bright lights of the West. Men like Yegor Gaidar and Andrei Kozyrev, whose famous statement, ``Russia is equidistant between New Delhi and Islamabad,'' made Indian diplomats grind their teeth in dismay. These were the lotus-eaters of the Kremlin, completely unmindful of history and Russia's place in it as well as special relationships carefully crafted over decades.

As Putin spoke at the function, some wondered silently, ``Why is he saying this? Isn't he one of them?'' Putin's arrival in India next week coincides with some of the most powerful changes that are taking place in Russia. The President and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee are set to sign the Declaration of Strategic Partnership. Kremlin-watchers in Delhi also point out that India and Russia may not be natural allies in a reinvented world order but there is great mutual benefit in military cooperation, science and technology, peaceful uses of nuclear energy and civil aviation and trade.

Look carefully at the clutch of agreements likely to be signed during the Putin visit, these analysts say, and behind the onion-layered relationship exist elements that have the potential of rendering impotent, humiliating sanctions imposedby other nuclear powers. Vajpayee knows this, which is perhaps why he is hosting a personal dinner for the President on the evening of October 2 at his home on Race Course Road, the night before his official trip to India begins.

The Russian President will be feted in style over the next three days in the capital, Agra and Mumbai. Significantly, he is likely to visit the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) during his Mumbai trip besides addressing the CII and other chambers of commerce.

But there are other key questions hanging over the dockyards in St. Petersburg, where three frigates and two submarines are being commissioned (one each has been transferred) for the Indian Navy. Russian officials in Moscow and St. Petersburg are beginning to ask the question: Is India interested at all in reinventing new relationships in a multipolar world, such as acquisitions in fighter aircraft industries and license producingcutting-edge technology? Or is it content with instant profit from sales ofindifferent tea and tobacco. It's a question, they say, they would like toask New Delhi when Putin goes to India next week.