On Wednesday, Jaitley will join Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin in the first meeting of the India-Russia High-Level Committee on Science and Technology, a committee formed to discuss cooperation in high technologies. The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the Technoprom Exhibition where Jaitley will speak at the main plenary session.On Friday, the Indian defense minister will co-chair the 17th meeting of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation along with his Russian counterpart, General Sergei Shoigu. “The meeting will review the entire range of military and military-technical cooperation issues between India and Russia within the framework of the Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership between the two countries,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
The St. Petersburg vision document called upon both the countries to work towards a “qualitatively higher level of military-to-military cooperation”.
Experts reckon that India and Russia enjoy broad understanding and agreements have been reached in the military-technical sector, but as the St. Petersburg vision document said, more effort must go into managing the devil in the details.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s successful visit to Russia and meeting with President Vladimir Putin has left no doubt about the level of mutual trust both countries enjoy. Both leaders reiterated the commonness of their strategic vision and purpose,” Nandan Unnikrishnan, vice-president and senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, said.
But the two countries need to build on the personal bonhomie that Modi and Putin enjoy and work on strengthening cooperation especially in a core area such as defense.
“While both countries have extensive experience in dealing with each other, they must guard against vested interest and bureaucratic inertia which at times affects the relationship in this area from transforming to a qualitatively different level,” he added.
