When India and Ukraine meet, it’s the pharmacy of the world coming together with the breadbasket of the world. One cures the sick, while the other eliminates hunger.
That’s an exaggeration, but not much of one. The nations’ respective areas of economic prowess have driven annual bilateral trade to $3 billion — with Ukraine coming out the big winner, exporting roughly twice as much to India as it imports.
India is not complaining, though.
“We’re a consuming nation,” Indian Ambassador to Ukraine Partha Satpathy told the Kyiv Post in an interview ahead of Jan. 27 events celebrating the 70th anniversary of India’s Republic Day. The official holiday is on Jan. 26.
India’s 1.3 billion people are voracious customers of Ukraine’s grain, sunflower oil, and other agricultural products, while Ukrainians need the affordable medicine and vaccines that India supplies in abundance. Additionally, Ukrainian medical universities educate close to 15,000 Indian students annually.
The trade turnover has been accomplished without a bilateral free-trade agreement. Neither side, Satpathy said, has felt the need to codify the trade rules yet.
That attitude seems to embody the spirit of Indian-Ukrainian ties: The relationship appears smooth, with no peaks or valleys, sprinkled with occasional high-level visits and periods of dormancy.
India’s neutrality
In a world in which Ukraine faces a hostile neighbor and other challenges, the Indian relationship must come as a relief. But there are limits to India’s friendship and what it is willing to do for Ukraine.
India will not criticize Russia as the aggressor in the Kremlin’s six-year war against Ukraine. It will not condemn the takeover of Crimea. It will not impose sanctions on Russia. New Delhi wants to stay out of the conflict and avoid alienating two nations that it regards as friends.
“We encourage both countries to fruitful dialogue,” Satpathy said. “Countries at war cannot provide the economic growth that people demand. When Ukraine became independent, we recognized it in its entirety. We have strong bilateral relations with both nations. We hope they find a way to settle their differences.”
Indians “don’t believe in this system of sanctions as a state policy,” the ambassador said.
The ambassador will not even clearly state that Crimea is Ukrainian. “History will reveal. There’s a historical background to it,” he said.
Such stances are disappointing for Ukraine, whose main allies are Western countries. Bhanu Sahni, a longtime Indian expatriate living in Kyiv, said his government has “close ties with Russia and, being the biggest buyer of Russian arms, lots of intergovernmental interaction” that it does not want to damage.
Ukraine-India relations
In 2002, President Leonid Kuchma visited India. In 2005, then-Indian President Abdul Kalam visited Kyiv during President Viktor Yushchenko’s administration. In 2012, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych also went to India.
But that’s it for top-level visits in the last eight years. During President Petro Poroshenko’s term, only Deputy Prime Minister Stepan Kubiv made a couple of trips to India and Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin also visited once.
While India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke by telephone, no visit has been scheduled. But Satpathy said that there’s no reason to worry — the relationship is just fine. Meetings are taking place at many levels, and Satpathy himself has met with Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko and National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov.
As for gaps in top-level visits, he said that “Ukraine has been focused on things that have taken energy and time,” including revolutions, war and a succession of new governments. “We are two large democracies. We have governments with the overwhelming support of the people. This provides ballast.”
India’s challenges
India has its own set of preoccupying challenges. It wants to at least double its economy — to $5 trillion annually — in a nation where at least 25% of people live in extreme poverty. The economy, which had been growing at a 7% clip, is slowing down.
India also has longstanding conflicts with Pakistan and in Jammu and Kashmir. A new law gives a citizenship path to illegal migrants except Muslims, critics say, triggering public protests. The popular Modi government is accused of pursuing a Hindu nationalist agenda.
“There is nothing anti-Muslim or pro-Hindu. We are democratic and secular,” Satpathy said, disputing the critics. “All our citizens are equally empowered. The beauty of democracy is it gives all sections and sectors of society an ability to express themselves.” In the end, he said: “The courts are there, parliaments are there. Everyone will scrutinize the process and, finally, the will of the people will prevail.”
Gandhi’s influence
Like most Indians, Satpathy reveres Mahatma Gandhi, the nation’s founder and spiritual leader, whose 150th birthday on Oct. 2, 1869, is cause for a year-long celebration. Of all Gandhi’s wisdom, Satpathy is fond of Gandhi’s admonition to “be the change you want to see in this world.”
A Hindu who believed that Gandhi was too accommodating to India’s Muslims in the 1947 partition, which created Pakistan, assassinated the leader on Jan. 30, 1948.
Even though the post-colonial Constitution came into effect in 1950, Gandhi had a hand in its creation. The Constitution “drew on the ideas of freedom fighters and legal experts. It has borrowed heavily from existing sources that have proved their worth over time, including the American Constitution. It is a stellar document. It is flexible and allows a mechanism for change,” Satpathy said.
The Indian community and its friends will celebrate the Republic Day holiday on Jan. 27 at the Ramada Encore hotel in Kyiv.
Personal contacts
While both nations formally require visas, they are readily obtained on both sides.
Ukrainians are able to get e-visas online, while the acceptance rate for Indians is high. Still, less than 20,000 people from each nation may travel between the countries annually. Nonetheless, the connections are good. Ukraine International Airlines has four weekly non-stop flights between Kyiv and New Delhi.
Tourism to India is booming. International tourist arrivals are expected to reach 30 million people by 2028, when the sector alone will account for $492 billion yearly — almost four times Ukraine’s current annual gross domestic product.
Sahni, an Indian citizen in Kyiv who owns the Silk Route gift shop, said that Ukraine “has not been active enough either with looking eastward in general or trying to realize a changing global economy that is more and more Asia-centric with China and India.”
In attracting tourists alone, Ukraine is hobbled by an “outdated visa system” with India., Sahni said. “Visas are issued only in the Delhi embassy, with mostly personal interviews. Getting Schengen, U.S. and U.K. visas is a lot easier and a lot cheaper.”
Medical students
India is conspicuous in other ways in Ukraine, including the presence of nearly 15,000 students — mostly medical ones. It has 150 companies, led by the pharmaceutical sector, although direct investment is low.
As Ukraine opens up more sectors for business, Satpathy sees more opportunities for Indian investment. He said that the advent of transparent online bidding platforms like ProZorro for purchases of medicine benefits India. “We beat the competition hands-down,” he said. “Therefore, it is good for us.”
Business and culture
According to Satpathy, Indian businesses are watching the coming sale of state-owned enterprises, the renewable energy sector and “we are interested in agriculture, once Ukrainian policies are clear on landholding.”
Indian businesses need rule of law, “the reassurance that whatever they invest will be safeguarded,” the ambassador said. “What would be the right threshold for investment takeoff, we will have to see.”
India also likes to “showcase our cultural wealth here,” as Satpathy put it. The Indian Embassy and private clubs sponsor yoga and dance lessons, while it’s also possible to study Hindi, watch screenings of Bollywood movies and dine in Indian restaurants.
“Indians expect to retain their own individuality and at the same time blend into the external environment and add value,” Satpathy said.
There is no shortage of Indian holidays to celebrate: Diwali, the festival of lights, takes place in November, while Holi, the festival of spring, occurs in March. Indian Independence Day is in August.
Eclectic background
Satpathy likes singing, dancing, playing cricket and golf. But there’s nothing in his biography to suggest that he would end up in Ukraine.
He studied physics. Then business administration, human rights, and international law. He joined the foreign service in 1990. He oversaw the entire Latin American region, served in many embassies, and was ambassador to Senegal. His posting to India’s embassy in Moscow led to his appointment in Ukraine, where he’s been on duty since November 2018.
“I have a love for the simplicity with which mathematics and physics can explain complex ideas,” he said. His entry into the foreign service can be explained by his desire “to travel, to know the world, to see people, to see governments, to interact with people who are interested in the world,” Satpathy said.
He credits the “grace of God and a bit of luck” — as well as hard work — for passing the foreign service exam nearly 30 years ago.
“The competition is extremely severe in India,” he said. “We were 12 in our batch (who passed) and almost 300,000 people took the exam.” Along the way, he picked up the Portuguese, French and Spanish languages.
He said that Indian diplomats have the benefit of being received as friends in most nations where they serve.
“India is one of the few countries where we can sit across the table in almost all nations, with few exceptions, and not only talk, but talk with sincerity,” he said. “They believe us.”
Being in a democratic nation like Ukraine makes the job even easier, he said. “When two democracies talk to each other, there’s a wealth of commonality of language.”
