After departing Mumbai, in the Indian Ocean, the ship sails to the UAE and dump the cargo of Indian cell phones. Then a train with the cargo crosses deserts in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and arrives in Israel. A vessel, in the port of Haifa, sets sail with the goods towards Greece, to meet European consumers.
The tour, planned from an emerging geoeconomic logic, would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. But imagining the route sheds light on two trends to solidify: India strengthening its position as an exporter of industrialized products and cooperation, supported by the so-called Abraham Agreements, between Israel and former enemies of the Middle East, such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain .
Studies on the new commercial itinerary estimate the trip for the cell phone produced in India to reach Europe in 10 days, a shorter period, for example, than that used by the traditional Suez channel. It is, therefore, another chapter of the changes in the “Eurasian economic order”.
Last week, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Israel. And, alongside Israeli colleague Yair Lapid, he participated in a videoconference with US and UAE diplomats, a quadripartite confab unthinkable years ago.
In the Cold War, Israel and India used to live in opposite camps. While Israelis cultivated an alliance with the US, Indians opted for ties with the USSR. The Soviet collapse in 1991 was a reality check for the socialist governments of New Delhi, leading them to adopt pro-market economic reforms and a diplomatic realignment shaped by rapprochement with Washington and abandoning the “third-party” primer. worldly”.
Fears of the dizzying growth of neighboring China also spurred India to seek support from the White House. And the reconfigured post-Cold War Indian diplomacy, without abandoning ties with Arab countries, approached Israel through political, economic and military alliance.
The take-off from India was supported, from 1991, mainly on the dynamism of the service sector, exemplified by technological areas and by the famous call centers. The strategy, however, is not capable of solving a pressing challenge: generating jobs for Indians living in rural areas. They correspond to 65% of the population, that is, around 890 million inhabitants.
The key would lie in industrialization as a generator of large-scale jobs. In the coming decades, India intends to follow the path followed by China in the initial stages of its take-off: industrialize, generate jobs and urbanize.
It would be a kind of changing of the guard. From 1978 onwards, China took off as the “factory of the world”, in accelerated industrialization and urbanization. Currently, the main engine of the Chinese economy is the construction of the largest consumer market on the planet, supported by an unprecedented middle class, with hundreds of millions of people.
With the slogan “Make in India”, right-wing prime minister Narendra Modi seeks to attract foreign companies and investments for a new cycle of economic growth. And, now, it would be up to the Indians the role of “the world’s factory”.
India’s strategic reviews also take into account the tectonic changes in the Middle East, a key region for the passage of Indian products, for example, to European markets. And, with an eye on renewed scenarios, New Delhi’s strategists are redesigning political alliances and trade routes.
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