India- GCC Relations - Nov, 2024

 India- GCC Relations 

 

 India’s relation with the Gulf Cooperation Council proves to play one of the crucial and pivotal roles as Gulf constitutes not only the “immediate” neighbourhood but a major trade and investment partner to India who together share the dream of political stability and security in the region. These relations have been seen to have strengthened amidst the ongoing West-Asian turmoil with high geo-political tensions along with Hamas-Israel conflict and Russia-Ukraine conflict which has further presented larger opportunities to institutionalize cooperation among political, trade, energy and security domains with the GCC. But in spite of such strong relations and shared thoughts, India GCC have not yet been able to come to common grounds and sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA)which would boost trade and development and significantly impact the areas like food security, supply chains, healthcare, energy security, renewable energy, technology, and tourism positively. Energy has always been in the centre of this relationship with GCC fulfilling over half of India’s crude oil demand single handedly where the GCC’s substantial oil and gas reserves are of immense importance for India’s energy security where India has also bid to join the International Energy Agency (IEA) to meet it’s growing aspirations in global energy governance. India’s efforts to strengthen the relations have also translated into new regional cooperation initiatives like the India- Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and the I1U2 grouping (India, Israel and the UAE, US). With over 66% of non-resident Indians residing in the GCC countries and contributing to about 30% of the inward total remittances to India, maintaing strategic ties proves to be of prime importance for India. In effect, the GCC offers significant potential for cooperation, including in the sectors of political, security, defence, energy, social, cultural, and people-to-people ties. Hence for India the relation emphasises building consensus on political and security and strategic issues affecting it. As the region is going through rapid political changes, it becomes imperative for India to engage with these countries looking beyond the economic relationship with the GCC countries. There is still a lot of scope for the relations to be taken to a higher, strategic level that would change trade, energy, security on a geo-political table dynamically.