Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Look East’ policy is a vital string to the bow of India’s foreign policy. The momentum of global change brings fresh challenges, opportunities and the occasional pitfall. They have all to be calibrated and factored into a coherent working order, flexible but clear in its averred goal, that of safeguarding and promoting the national interest.
It is on this canvas that India’s outreach to Vietnam needs to be fully understood and appreciated. The building blocks were already in place during Indira Gandhi’s tenure as Indian Prime Minister. Indeed, there was an earlier rapport between her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Vietnam’s founding father and first President, the legendary Ho Chi Minh. The Indian masses had followed closely the Vietnamese liberation struggle, first against the occupying remnants of the Japanese Imperial Army, then the far greater struggle against French colonialism, climaxed by the country’s epic resistance and victory over the United States, previously paymaster of the French. Vietnam’s unity – which America had staunchly opposed - came with its military triumph in April 1975. Vietnam’s victory, in valour, skill and endurance, was second only to the Soviet Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War and its demolition of Hitler’s vaunted Thousand-Year Third Reich.
Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, but his indomitable heirs, were among them, the military architect of victory, Defence Minister General Vo Nguyen Giap, with Prime Minister Pham Van Dong the political guide. Vietnam subsequently entered Cambodia, overthrew the infamous, Chinese backed, monster Pol Pot Khmer Rouge and drove it into the jungle, repelled a Chinese invasion of their country in 1979 – apparently to teach Vietnam a lesson taught to India in 1962, said Beijing. The humbling of China, the expulsion of Pol Pot, antagonised the West, both, at time, de facto allies of the United States.
During this regional tumult, India had stood firmly behind Vietnam, and hence Premier Pham van Dong arrived in New Delhi to express his country’s gratitude for India’s support in its darkest hours. India, like Vietnam, was poor, but had shared the paucity of its economic possessions. Vietnam, said her visitor would not forget India’s generosity. As a quid pro quo Vietnam expressed total support for India’s territorial dispute with China along the Himalayan border, fact which the slow-witted Indian media are yet to report or recognise after all these years. Jejune reports on President Trump’s latest shenanigans at home and abroad are all that apparently matter.
The vistas of India-Vietnam relations lend hope and expectation that the best is yet to come, although they have galloped forward in the decades since, with both Congress-led and BJP-led governments cementing ties, particularly in defence and security, where cooperation is intense and deep. China’s rise reflected in its bullying conduct in the South China Sea has alarmed South East and India, whose unfolding responses are likely to have an enduring regional impact. Vietnam is one the region’s tiger economies, forging ahead in multiple directions, one towards India.
The fact file bulges with promise. Vietnam is currently India’s fourth-largest trading partner in ASEAN [Association of South East Asian Nations] with bilateral trade currently worth $14 billion, almost double from $7.8 billion in 2016, and expected to reach $15 billion in 2020 and rising. Oil exploration, agricultural and industrial manufactures are the staple elements of trade. According to the Foreign Investment Agency of Vietnam, during the first six months of 2019, India registered 30 new investment projects worth total capital of $21.74 million in key sectors such as energy, mineral exploration agro-processing, farm products, IT. Tourism has been boosted by e-visa applications and direct air travel which commenced in October 2019.
During Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Hanoi in September 2016, the India-Vietnam relationship was raised to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. India also contributes river projects in the Mekong.
In sum, the India-Vietnam relationship is set to grow in every facet of development, agriculture, industry, science, technology education and not least, in defence and security.
