India set to target East Asia and Gulf for new investment

Dubai: India's foreign policy is set to look east as it emerges that the West is unlikely to help India fulfil its growth goals amid an economic downturn.

This assessment was given by Indian experts and academics during a seminar at the Dubai Press Club on Wednesday.

India's foreign policy is largely built on its national interests, said Dr Girijesh Pant, the Vice Chancellor of Doon University and former Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

These interests stipulate that the government should maintain a steady growth rate for the economy, he added.

Pant was speaking at the Dubai Press Club alongside K.N. Panikkar, the Vice Chancellor of Sankaracharya University, Dr Mujeebur Rahman, Professor of Arabic Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Atul Aneja, West Asia correspondent for the Indian daily The Hindu.

In the recent past, India maintained close ties to the West, whose industries had grown to rely on Indian labour and information technology, Pant said.

"Since the end of the Soviet Union, a globalisation process was triggered and the Indian economy was repositioned according to the [new] world order," he said, referring to the United States and its allies.

"For the next five years the Indian economy will have to be repositioned since the West will not have the capacity to deliver to India's requirements," he said.

The states that are more likely to deliver are those of East Asia and West Asia, the term used in South Asian states to refer to the Middle East, he said.

"Asian primacy is likely to come back and India will look towards the emerging markets of Asia. China's rise will be another factor that will make India look towards Asia," he said.

Aneja agreed: "Traditional access to investment from the West has dried out."

He added that the Gulf region would also be one of the regions where India could economically benefit from.

"There has been an enormous jump in non-oil trading figures between the Gulf and India. There is potential for a huge economic relationship," Aneja said.