Some time ago, we raised in our pages the subject of Poland's possible cooperation with India. As it turned out, however, one of the world's biggest economic powers is indeed strengthening its relations, but with a completely different country.
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The direction of cooperation?
Let us recall that Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, flew to Warsaw in August and it was the first such visit since 1979. Not surprisingly, analysts took up the topic, wondering what and how much benefit could Poland gain from cooperation on a much larger scale with such a giant?
Looking at how fast India is developing and the great human and economic potential at its disposal, the value of such relations would be enormous. For Poland should increasingly boldly look towards Asia, where the economic and business centre of the world is slowly but steadily shifting. As a country that not only aspires to join the global top league, but is already in it, India could appear to us to be a country with enormous potential.
Will such a tightening and offensive towards India ever happen? We do not know. The fact is, however, that New Dehli has for a long time been betting on cooperation with a country that Poland does not particularly like, namely Russia.
Sanctions? What sanctions?
It is no secret that Russia has been on censorship for more than two years. All thanks to its aggression against Ukraine, which prompted Western countries to impose a series of serious sanctions on Moscow. The intention was that these economic weapons would hit the aggressor harder than military action, but as it turned out, not everyone was going to respect the decisions taken by the US and allies.
According to Bloomerg, after the sanctions, Russia turned its sights towards China and it is Beijing that has long been the largest supplier of technology to Russia. However, it is not the only giant that has decided to seize the opportunity.
Speaking only of the aforementioned technologies - those involving microchips - India has become Russia's second largest partner. In July this year alone, exports in this sector amounted to $95 billion, an almost threefold increase compared to the beginning of the year!
However, this is not the end of the story. The aforementioned source also reports that as much as 20 per cent of the technological exports flowing from India to Russia are de facto extremely sensitive technologies that are used in the military industry. At a time when warfare is taking place in Ukraine, such involvement is very dangerous.
Someone loses, someone benefits
As business abhors a vacuum, this situation was easy to predict. As the USA and European countries hit Russia with more sanctions, it was a foregone conclusion that there would be other countries that would want to make a profit. And that is when the Modi government arrived on the scene.
For not only is India earning crores from exporting technology to Russia, it is also importing oil on good terms, the sale of which - especially to European markets - has been extremely limited.
Of course, in such a situation India has to contend with the murmurings of Washington, which regularly ‘informs’ about the possible consequences of supporting Russia. All the indications are, however, that New Dehli does little about this, having a number of arguments - including nuclear weapons - not to worry about these warnings and to do its own thing.
