POLITICS: Hiccups in Indo-Russian Defence Deals

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Tara Shankar Sahay

NEW DELHI, Oct 23 2005 (IPS) - Defence cooperation between India and Russia, which in recent years has included joint-development of cruise missiles, hit an air pocket when visiting Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov insisted on an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) agreement between the former cold-war allies.

A ‘friendly warning’ on the issue was delivered by Ivanov during his four-day visit to India, last week, to witness Indo-Russian war games carried out in the deserts of western Rajasthan state involving elite troops and state-of-the-art equipment.

Russian anxiety in clinching the IPR agreement was apparent when Ivanov went to the extent of hinting that future defence cooperation with India, that has dramatically increased military ties with the United States over the past two years, would hinge on a formal IPR agreement.

Ivanov also made a pointed reference to the fact that the issue figured prominently during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India last year and that since then there has been little movement on the issue.

”I think that it (IPR agreement) is under the active consideration of the Ministry of Defence,” said Commodore Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the state-funded, think tank, Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA ). ”They (the Russians) are giving us military hardware that we need and their anxiety in this context is understandable.”

Ivanov said the two countries had outstripped the old, client-provider relationship on the weapons front after they jointly developed the sophisticated BrahMos cruise missile, that is said to be superior to the U.S. Tomahawak cruise missile in many respects.

Multi-million dollar contracts signed with Russia, in recent years, include those for licensed production of the advanced Sukhoi-30MKI fighter, the T-90S main battle tank, stealth frigates for the Indian navy and the purchase of an aircraft carrier.

Indian President A P J Abdul Kalam personally favours aggressive joint-marketing of the BrahMos missile which is a product of the two countries’ joint research and development establishments and already there are firm orders from ten different countries.

Kalam is himself is a top rocket scientist and a former chief of India’s secretive Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) which shared equal credit with the Russians for the development of the missile that is to be marketed by the joint-venture BrahMos Aerospace.

BrahMos is a supersonic anti-ship cruise missile with a 300-km range. It can be launched from air, submarine or land and can turn 360 degrees generating concern on the Indian subcontinent particularly from long-time military rival Pakistan.

The post cold-war era saw Russia doing away with a rupee-rouble arrangement and insisting that India pay for up to 70 percent of defence purchases in hard cash. Russia still provides India the bulk of its military hardware and Ivanov himself pegged the figure at 40 percent.

Explaining Russia’s insistence on India signing the IPR agreement with it, Pravin Sawhney defence analyst and editor of the national security magazine ‘Force’ said: ” Moscow is impatient because it is the first time that it has gone on the partnership mode with India in the area of joint defence production but is apprehensive that its cutting-edge technology could be leaked out to a third party.”

”Moscow wants monitor its end-use restriction and also ensure that there is no internal proliferation,” Sawhney pointed out in an IPS interview.

His reference to ‘internal proliferation’ alluded, for instance, to the possibility of India using a certain cutting-edge technologies such as those pertaining to cryogenic engines for space launches being used to develop inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

A senior defence ministry official, unwilling to be named, contended that with the Indian government now shopping for arms from countries like the Israel and the U.S., Moscow was bound to be apprehensive.

It is no secret that the Russia resents Israel’s emergence as a major arms supplier to India. During September 2003, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon visited India and discussed provision of the coveted ‘Phalcon’ airborne early warning system and the anti-ballistic ‘Arrow’ missile which New Delhi feels must be an indispensable part of its armoury to negate possible nuclear attack from Pakistan.

The Russians have noted that Israel now annually supplies two billion dollars worth of military hardware to India.

Also, on July 18, July President George W. Bush signed an accord with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledging to help India gain access to international civilian nuclear technology, although this country has refused to sign the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), another vestige of the cold war.

The agreement, which awaits Congressional approval, was seen by many as the final weaning away of India into the Western camp after decades of isolation-featuring embargos on the export to this country of ‘dual-use’ technologies, especially those relating to space and nuclear applications.

Sawhney, however, has no doubt that the IPR agreement between New Delhi and Moscow will fructify in a few months time because ”we want the sophisticated Russian technology now whereas earlier we preferred arms in large numbers over top-grade quality in view of our country’s large size”.

He says the Russian waiver of an earlier demand that the IPR agreement be implemented with restrospective effect (from the Soviet era onwards ) has benefited India greatly considering the vast amounts of defence technology and equipment transferred to this country during the cold war years.

Sharing Sawhney’s views was defence expert and former Jawaharlal Nehru University professor, S Sreedhar Rao. ”India is aware about its international obligations, especially when it comes to time-tested friendly countries. We are minutely scrutinizing the IPR agreement and in a vast country like ours, implementing it is going to take some time,” Rao told IPS.

Top Indian defence analysts like C Raja Mohan have highlighted the inevitability of Russia fending off growing competition in the Indian defence market and adapting the old Indo-Russian defence cooperation to the new realities in the region.

The reminder from Ivanov, of the sensitive IPR issue on joint Indo-Russian defence production, is seen as a minor prickle in the relations between the two countries given that there is too much at stake for both.

At the end of the day, say analysts, Russia will continue to be India’s main arms supplier for reasons of integration built up over decades while Russia cannot find as lucrative and as big a market as India for its defence production.