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dc.contributor.authorHall, Ian
dc.date.accessioned2021-07-06T06:05:13Z
dc.date.available2021-07-06T06:05:13Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10072/405714
dc.description.abstractIn late November 2014, in the flurry of foreign visits that marked his early months in power, Narendra Modi became the first Indian prime minister in almost thirty years to make an official trip to Australia, and only the third in history. Over four days, he attended the G20 summit in Brisbane, addressed a joint session of parliament in Canberra, and engaged with large gatherings of the Indian diaspora in both Melbourne and Sydney. It was a whirlwind tour and remarkably successful. Australian politicians, businesspeople, and the media met Modi with a mix of curiosity and enthusiasm, despite his checkered history. The diaspora, for its part, greeted Modi rapturously. In Sydney, where he gave a characteristically expansive speech lasting fully ninety minutes, a capacity crowd of 16,000 expatriate Indians chanted his name when he appeared on stage and cheered throughout his address. In his remarks to the Australian parliament, Modi was also effusive, if more concise. He waxed lyrical on the evolving “natural partnership” between Australia and India, as well as on the shared histories and sporting enthusiasms of both countries. For New Delhi today, he observed, Australia was no longer a “distant land on the southern edge of the world.” Rightly, the country is now perceived as a key part of India’s region and a “vital partner in India’s quest for progress and prosperity.” In many areas of priority, from education and skills to healthcare and infrastructure to energy and agriculture, Modi argued, Australia can play and is playing a major part in India’s social and economic development. He called on the two to work more closely on regional security as well and to coordinate their diplomatic agendas in regional and global institutions like the EAS and G20. From now on, Modi concluded, “Australia will not be at the periphery of our vision, but at the center of our thought [sic].” For the most part, these claims rang true. When Modi came to office he inherited an Australia-India “strategic partnership” that had been painstakingly constructed, practically from scratch, over the previous decade. Prompted initially by the need to work together more effectively on counterterrorism, back in the early years of the fight against al Qaeda, the partnership soon broadened into other areas. In a relatively few years, Canberra and New Delhi conjured into being a complex web of high-level bilateral dialogues, inter-agency meetings, memoranda of understanding, and framework agreements facilitating intelligence sharing, defense industrial collaboration, and joint exercises. Both sides also worked hard – though to less effect – to encourage trade and investment, to open Australian universities and colleges to Indian students, and to build research collaborations. And in so doing, the two countries overcame several decades of drift, mutual neglect, and periodic misunderstanding in their relations, and set aside a number of contentious issues. The Modi effect?
dc.languageEnglish
dc.publisherThe Asan Forum
dc.publisher.placeWashington DC
dc.publisher.urihttp://www.theasanforum.org/the-struggle-to-maintain-momentum-in-the-australia-india-partnership/
dc.subject.fieldofresearchInternational relations
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode440808
dc.titleThe Struggle to Maintain Momentum in the Australia-India Partnership
dc.typeReport
dc.type.descriptionU2 - Reviews/Reports
dcterms.bibliographicCitationHall, C, The Struggle to Maintain Momentum in the Australia-India Partnership, 2019
dc.date.updated2021-07-06T06:02:32Z
gro.hasfulltextNo Full Text
gro.griffith.authorHall, Ian I.


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