Russia–India High Technology Cooperation

This article discusses the most promising areas for enforcing the efforts on development of high-tech cooperation between Russia and India. The cooperation with India began already during the Soviet period. Today, despite a substantial increase in the absolute value in trade and investment cooperation between the two countries over the past half decade, their relative shares in the total external trade and investment remain insignificant. A substantial experience of cooperation between Russia and India in both the Soviet and Russian period, and the opening new areas of cooperation with changes in the geopolitical situation in the world economy, makes India one of the most promising and important partners for the Russian Federation. In this situation it is urgent to identify the strong and weak points of current cooperation in hi-tech sector, which is universally recognized as the most important for the existence of the modern state. The analysis identified 5 most relevant technological sectors of cooperation between Russia and India – nuclear, aerospace, pharmaceutical, and militarytechnical sphere and the sphere of information and telecommunication technologies. The current projects and areas of collaboration in scientific fields and production spheres of high-tech products with the most potential are discussed in detail. An overview of the current state of Russian–Indian relations in light of the ongoing pragmatic rethinking of foreign policy priorities of both countries, is presented. Branches with the best prospects for the application of state efforts for cooperation on a new level are indentified.