Defence, ecology, research and education are the top items on the agenda during French President Emmanuel Macron’s first official visit to India, which begins on Friday evening, reports RFI.
On the four-day India trip Macron is accompanied by top ministers, most of them women, including defence minister Florence Parly and foreign affairs minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
The emphasis is on reinforcing the 20-year-old strategic partnership with India, and enhancing it with cultural, research and education exchanges.
Technology and the environment are also key subjects, with Macron due to cochair the inaugural meeting of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The minister for higher education and research, Frédérique Vidal, is a member of the delegation, as are junior minister for ecological transition Brune Poirson and France’s special envoy for the International Solar Alliance’s operations, who was environment minister in the previous, Socialist government when the ISA initiative was launched at Cop21 in Paris in 2015.
While trade is always a very big part of official visits, major contracts are unlikely to be signed this time.
A contract to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets has already been signed, and, even though the Indian Air Force is reportedly keen to have more as a deterrent to Pakistan, the details of another one have yet to be ironed out, and that can take years.
Trade between France and India has tripled in the past three years, Asia expert Jean-Joseph Boillot notes, but diplomacy is very important in the changing relationship between Paris and Delhi.
“The two countries are closer and closer on international issues like Syria, Iran and also China,” he says. “China will not be quoted in the official statements in this visit but on the Indian side every day in the Indian press you get worrying reports about Chinese gains to the north and south of India.
“So China has become very recently perceived as threat number one. Not that China is a threat for us [France] but it’s clear we have multipolar diplomacy and we are not very keen to see the two big superpowers playing alone. So we need a kind of alliance with countries like India to counterbalance the two big powers’ game.”