“Europe has actually for a long time relied on three, they call it three wheel drive, cheap energy, cheap security and cheap labor. So globalization meant that they relied on China to produce cheap versions of products that Europeans would consume at low prices,” said Prem Mahadevan, Europe affairs analyst.
Talking On The Gist, Mahadevan said “Europe relied on America to provide security, and on Russia for energy. Now, these have all come under strain in a very short period of time, so that has triggered an anxiety, I wouldn’t say a panic, but definitely anxiety in Europe that they have lost their competitive edge.”
They have seen China become a high tech manufacturer in ways that were never anticipated. India in that sense is not yet on the horizon because it accounts for a very small percentage of the continent’s trade.
Current European attitudes towards India is paternalistic, that India needs the free trade agreement with Europe more than the other way around. This kind of thinking is very common, very latent.
But that could change. He noted that Indians who interact with their European counterparts in conferences, especially business conferences or policy events, think tank events, if they keep talking about India’s inevitable rise, which the Chinese used to in the past, that kind of talk could awaken anxieties about India.
This is important for India is a largely unknown quantity in Europe, knowledge about it limited to three categories of people: there is the business community which deals with its Indian counterparts and there is a professional understanding largely focused on work culture; there are the scholars who study India, know Indian languages, culture and write on it for the European scholastic community, and their impact is limited.
But the security experts who travel to India once in a while, know little about India and during times of negative coverage, tend to get influenced by what the international media is saying. Then again when India talks about strategic autonomy, France is a strong advocate of a Europe not tied to US apron strings.
In times such as these when the US is behaving like an imperial power in the context of the Iran war, those perceptions matter.
Tune in for more in this conversation with Prem Mahadevan, Europe affairs analyst.