I’ve just returned from India. The fraction I saw was filled with everything working and people liking their Government and optimistic about the future. Then I arrived in UK with images of Peter Mandelson in his underpants. I was in India with Peter when he was Business Minister. Nothing salacious to report. Then again, unlike him, I respect the Official Secrets Act.
India’s doctrine of strategic autonomy has never meant isolation. Strategic autonomy is diluted when a state becomes dependent on a single bloc for critical inputs: capital, energy, technology, defence supply chains, or export markets. Integration with two competing blocs can actually increase autonomy by creating alternatives. In classic realist terms, India can “hedge” rather than “bandwagon”. It gains bargaining power by being valuable to both, and subordinate to neither.
In practical terms, an EU–India FTA and deeper US–India trade and technology alignment are not identical instruments. The EU tends to export regulation and standards; the US tends to export security-driven technology controls and market access. Navigating both can widen India’s economic corridor rather than narrow it, provided India does not accept obligations that constrain future options.
The three autonomy risks India must manage
First, standards capture.
The EU’s strength is rule-making. An FTA can pull India toward European standards on data, carbon, labour, and product regulation. That can improve market access and quality, but it can also reduce India’s ability to set its own regulatory path. India’s autonomy survives if it negotiates mutual recognition where possible, and avoids wholesale importation of frameworks that do not fit its development stage.
Second, technology entanglement.
The US relationship increasingly centres on semiconductors, AI, defence tech, and supply-chain security. The benefit is access and partnership. The risk is becoming a de facto extension of US export-control strategy against China, limiting India’s ability to trade pragmatically. India must preserve “issue-by-issue alignment” rather than automatic alignment.
Third, dependency through concentration.
Autonomy erodes when trade dependence becomes lopsided. If too much of India’s exports, capital, or tech stack rely on one bloc, coercion becomes possible. The remedy is deliberate diversification: multiple markets, multiple supply sources, and strong domestic capability in critical sectors.
What India should do to integrate without becoming dependent
- Keep the doctrine explicit: state clearly that economic partnerships do not imply security subordination.
- Negotiate “autonomy clauses”: protect policy space for industrial policy, subsidies, and public procurement where needed for development.
- Build domestic capability in choke points: semiconductors, defence manufacturing, energy transition inputs, and digital infrastructure. Autonomy is ultimately industrial, not rhetorical.
- Use triangulation strategically: EU access for standards legitimacy and investment; US alignment for technology and security; retain pragmatic commercial space with others where interests permit.
- Insist on reciprocity and mobility: particularly in services, professional visas, and recognition of qualifications. Otherwise integration becomes one-way extraction of market access without human-capital flow.
