The British, Bombay and businesses in Indian foreign policy

It’s helpful that India’s international economic aspirations neatly dovetail with the ambitions of business magnates.

Ved Shinde

12 February 20254 min read

“La perfide Angleterre” is how the 17th-century French bishop Bossuet denounced his fellow rivals across the channel. The French spat on English commerce. In Paris, the English were seen as grubby, greedy, maritime and mercantile. France fashioned itself as the pious, land-based Rome, while the English were disparaged as the ruthless Carthage. Centuries later, the same derision was reserved for the Americans. French Premier Georges Clemenceau remarked, “America is the only nation in history that miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation.” From French eyes, how did the “Anglo-Saxons” sin? They worshipped money.

Post-1945, when the British were gradually bidding farewell east of Suez, they left some habits behind. To cultivate commerce became an “acquired taste”. Hong Kong proved to be a shining example. Through the 1960s, South Korea supported its chaebols – family-owned businesses – with state subsidies, lax tax regimes, protectionist barriers and generous credit. Firms such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG became the shining faces of Seoul’s export-led growth strategy. Taiwan and Singapore hopped to the same beat in their studios. Imitation was better than flattery.

Cut to the present. In his first speech at home this year, India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar extolled the values of commerce. He was in Bombay (Mumbai, if you please). The cue was for Indian business houses to unleash themselves internationally. The Delhi durbar was renouncing its monopoly over foreign policy. Enterprise was being given its due.

Bombay has long been the heart of Indian capital. Since the times of Lowjee Nusserwanji Wadia, the Parsi pioneer who mastered shipbuilding in the 18th century, trade shaped the city’s amour propre. If dusty landlocked Delhi behaves like the subcontinental brute, Bombay sails ahead with silver tongues. Money is to be made, deals have to be done.

Over the last few years, officialdom in Delhi has promoted the overseas expansion of Indian businesses. This is being done for both economic and strategic reasons. Take the Adani group. In early 2023, it acquired a 70 per cent stake in the Israeli Haifa port. The port is historically significant for Tel Aviv. Allowing Indian businesses to establish a regional footing there is instructive. It tells the story of how commerce is being used as a long-term balm to soothe regional fissures.

What is certain in our time of unknowns is Delhi’s messaging to its business class. Refurbish your ovens. Bigger cakes must be baked.

Roots in Haifa will allow Indian capital to flow into the Middle East and North Africa along with accessing the Mediterranean. Haifa is a gateway into Europe. Despite the recent volatility in Gaza, the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor is an idea being baked for the long term. The Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis recently called it a “peace project” intended to inject regional stability.

Other overseas forays by Indian multinational companies in recent years include the GMR group’s management of airports in the Philippines and Indonesia while developing one in Greece. Even in emerging industries like space, Delhi is backing the efforts of new-age startups. Private players such as Skyroot and Agnikul recently completed suborbital launches while rocket makers EtherealX and Shyam VNL were picked to collaborate with the US defence innovation system. International capital is also flowing into India. In 2020, the then Facebook bought a $6 billion chunk of Reliance Jio, a data and telecom leviathan run by the Ambani family.

It is also helpful that Delhi’s aspirations – for the expansion of India’s international economic presence – neatly dovetail with the ambitions of Bombay’s business magnates. A few years ago, the analyst James Crabtree documented the dizzying heights that billionaire Mukesh Ambani had envisioned for his digital empire. Ambani started Jio to come out of the shadows of his father’s petrochemical giant Reliance. A new pivot for a new age.

Critics believe that the growing comfort between the political and economic elite in India is deeply harmful. They argue that it creates inefficient monopolies, deepens economic inequality and leads to bribery, fraud and cronyism. The Adani group has also been caught in legal controversies in countries from Bangladesh and Kenya to Australia and the United States. Supporters of India’s business expansion see otherwise. They argue that chumminess between the state and merchants helps consolidate India’s economic power and creates domestic jobs. To criticise capital is to wallow in third-world destitution.

This ongoing debate will have repercussions for India’s foreign policy. Two key issues in the upcoming meeting, this week, between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump will be trade and immigration. Beneath these, the larger question of the geopolitical orientation of India’s business class will be the underlying theme in discussions in Washington.

In our times, multinational corporations are finding it tricky to cultivate full-fledged markets on all sides of the geopolitical divide. For now, whether bets in favour of Elon Musk’s China operations will fructify is unknown. There are too many variables in the air to even reach tentative answers. On 22 January, when Masayoshi Son, Sam Altman and Larry Ellison were gleefully posing with Trump after announcing a $500 billion joint venture for AI infrastructure, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA was in Beijing.

What is certain in our time of unknowns is Delhi’s messaging to its business class. Refurbish your ovens. Bigger cakes must be baked.

About the author

Ved Shinde

Ved Shinde is an incoming doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge. He has previously been associated the Asia Society Policy Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.

Topics

India Economy