At last, a serious passage to India

THIS is the one that brings home the bacon.

A decade of often unrequited diplomatic outreach by Australia towards India, its most natural trade and defence partner in the Indian Ocean, has finally borne fruit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech to parliament yesterday.

Prime minister after state premier after military commander after business leader has made the Indian Ocean pilgrimage to face varying levels of polite lack of interest in New Delhi.

Those days are over, Mr Modi signalled yesterday, in an address that ticked every box in Australia’s wish list for expanded bilateral engagement with the region’s most important emerging economy.

Skills, education, energy, healthcare, mining, finance, infrastructure, agriculture, food processing, defence, maritime security; “I see Australia as a major partner in every area of our national priority,” he said.

“In turn, India will be the answer to your search for new economic opportunities and your desire to diversify your global economic engagement.”

This is music to Tony Abbott’s ears.

So too will be Mr Modi’s desire for a deeper security partnership, and closer regional co-operation between natural democratic Asia-Pacific allies — though not through the “borrowed architecture” of the past.

The East Asia Summit, Indian Ocean Rim Association, G20 and various trilateral dialogues will be the new forums for co-operation between India, Australia, Japan and the US.

Mr Modi is burying the old India of steadfast non-alignment dating back to the Cold War.

This is a leader looking outside the subcontinent’s vast perimeters for help to build its economy, and partners to shore up regional security. It is an India more confident in its place as a future world power calling on its Asia-Pacific allies.

Two months after Mr Abbott raced to be the first head of state to visit the newly elected Mr Modi, his reciprocal visit could scarcely be more of a departure from the India of old that viewed Australia as a benign irrelevance.

“Today the world sees Australia to be at the heart of the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean region,” Mr Modi said. “This dynamic region holds the key to this world’s future; and Australia is at its cross-currents.”

If Mr Modi, the most powerful Indian prime minister since Indira Gandhi, says it, then Indians will largely accept it.