India-Australia ties on the upswing
By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Sydney
Australian cricketer Symonds looking at Indian bowler Sreesanth
The cricket series was marred by controversy
Marred by the petulance and peevishness of the players, along with the boorishness of elements within the crowd, the recently concluded one-day cricket series between India and Australia will be remembered not for the quality of the cricket but the ill-mannered mood in which it was played.
Most one-day games are drearily formulaic and instantly forgettable.
These will stand out because of the clenched-fists and snarling teeth of Indian fast bowler Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, who seems intent of reinventing this once-genteel game as a full-on contact sport, and the monkey chants from the football-aping idiots in the crowd.
So, as the two sides prepare for the rematch Down Under, it is well to remember the increasingly close and growing ties between the two countries.
They go well beyond former Australian captain Steve Waugh's admirable charity work in Calcutta and Brett Lee's less admirable chart-topping crooning for a leading Bollywood singer.
Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, summed things up quite neatly with the title of a keynote speech he delivered in 2005: "Australia and India - not just cricket."
Complementary economies
The first thing to note, as Mr Downer did back then, is that India and Australia are complementary economies.
India is desperate for energy, and resources-rich Australia can provide the raw materials for its generation.
After all, Australia was dubbed the "lucky country" not because of its sunshine and beaches but largely because its plentiful endowment of coal, gold, minerals and uranium. It is the world's biggest coal exporter and boasts 40% of the world's known uranium reserves.
No wonder Delhi looks on it as a minerals bazaar: 90% of its imports from Australia are resources.
Manmohan Singh and John Howard's
Ties between the two countries are growing closer
In August, Prime Minister John Howard's conditional offer to sell uranium to India elevated the relationship to a new level.
For the Australian government, it meant a drastic shift in policy: it has long opposed selling uranium to countries, like India, which have not signed the global nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
That said, Mr Howard has made it clear that uranium exports are conditional on a satisfactory conclusion to nuclear talks between Delhi and Washington - and those talks are now looking to be on shaky ground.
And still fresh in the diplomatic memory is the prominent role that Canberra took, along with Tokyo and Ottawa, in forcefully condemning India's 1998 nuclear tests.
So Indian PM Manmohan Singh will be keeping an especially close eye on the outcome of the forthcoming Australian election.
The opposition Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, has pledged to review the Australian government's conditional decision to export uranium. The Australian Labor Party has a strong and vocal disarmament lobby, which is worried that the export deal will spark a regional nuclear arms race.
"Materially and symbolically, the deal is crucial to the relationship," says Rory Medcalf, a former Australian diplomat, who spent three years posted in Delhi and now works at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.
'Kangaroo hops'
"The Indian government would find it very difficult to understand if a new government reverted to the old policy.
"But the relationship has always been based on kangaroo hops - improvements for a short time, which aren't sustained."
Unquestionably, if Labor overturns the present government's stance on uranium, it would prove a major diplomatic stumbling block, but would not mark a return to the post-nuclear test acrimony of 1998.
To some extent, both sides are too busy making money from the relationship to be bitter.
India is Australia's fastest growing major merchandise export market, increasing at a staggering 34% per annum over the past five years. India has become Australia's fourth largest export market.
Both countries are keen to explore further trading opportunities. In August, they even went as far as to announce a joint feasibility study on whether they should forge a free trade agreement.
As so often in Australia, banking and infrastructure giant Macquarie Bank is leading the way. It is heavily involved in the long overdue redevelopment of Mumbai and Delhi airports.
Strategic
From a strategic viewpoint, Canberra is clearly keen to help facilitate India's rise.
Like the Bush administration, the Howard government sees India as a useful regional counterweight to China. It has been a driving force in what's called the quadrilateral security dialogue between India, Australia, Japan and America, a diplomatic grouping viewed warily by Beijing.
The Royal Australian Navy recently conducted joint exercises in the Bay of Bengal with ships from the Japanese, American, Singapore and Indian fleets, though admittedly they were aimed at responding to a regional disaster.
Culturally, too, bonds are being strengthened. Some 200,000 Australians have a sub-continental background - 1% of the population. About 40,000 Indian students travel to Australia each year, displacing Britain as the second most favoured destination after America.
Australia participated in naval exercises off India's east coast
Australia participated in naval exercises off India's east coast
In August, 22,000 people gathered in Sydney to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, at which Brett Lee was the headline attraction. A similar fair held in 1994 attracted only 250 people.
As a reporter from the Hindustan Times excitedly noted: "The buzz at the Athletics Centre in the Sydney Olympic Park almost felt like spending a day in Delhi's Pragati Maidan."
Admittedly, the case of Dr Mohamed Haneef, the Indian doctor arrested and then released in connection with the failed UK bomb plots, cast a shadow over relations.
But it was not very dark and not very long.
"Haneef was a blip," says Rory Medcalf. "In fact, good probably came of it because now there's a much closer security relationship between the two countries."
The Indian cricket team arrives in Australia later this year for four Test matches and a one-day series. Let the friendly games commence.
"Haneef was a blip,"
Thats putting in mildly
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