AHMEDABAD: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived in India on Thursday touting job-creating investment but facing long odds to get his reluctant counterpart Narendra Modi to back Western action against Russia.

Johnson arrived in Gujarat — Modi’s home state and the ancestral home to half of the United Kingdom’s British Indians — where he is meeting business leaders and taking a cultural tour of the historic Ahmedabad city.

He will leave for New Delhi to meet his Indian counterpart on Friday, providing Johnson some respite from the “partygate” controversy over his criminal violation of pandemic lockdown rules.

The India trip has been twice postponed because of Covid-19 flare-ups in each country. But UK sources said it was seen as too important to put off again.

Downing Street said it would seal two-way investment deals worth more than one billion ($1.3bn), creating almost 11,000 jobs in Britain.

“What we’re focusing on today is the incredible opportunities to deepen this partnership,” Johnson told reporters while visiting a factory in Gujarat.

Johnson’s visit began with a trip to Sabarmati ashram, once the home of independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, where he was invited to sit cross-legged and work a wooden spinning wheel.

The tool was once vital to the local textile industry and championed by Gandhi as a symbol of resistance to Britain’s colonial rule of India.

Downing Street said the visit would yield new partnerships on defence, artificial intelligence and green energy, along with investment deals in areas including robotics, electric vehicles and satellite launches.

But London acknowledges that it is some way off clinching a post-Brexit trade deal with Modi’s government, which wants more visas for Indians to work or study in the UK.

India, meanwhile, has refused openly to condemn the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine, reliant as it is on Russian imports of energy, agricultural goods and military hardware.

“India and Russia have historically a very different relationship, perhaps than Russia and the UK have had over the last couple of decades,” Johnson said. “We have to reflect that reality, but clearly I’ll be talking about it to Narendra Modi.”

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss came away from New Delhi empty-handed last month when she pressed the Indians to do more against Russia, and Modi has also given short shrift to appeals from US President Joe Biden.

Johnson will tout the benefits of India moving more quickly towards renewables — a pertinent strategic issue as countries attempt to pivot away from Russian energy.

“Both our countries are excessively reliant on foreign hydrocarbons. And we need to move away from that together,” Johnson said.

“One of the things that we’re talking about is what we can do to build partnerships on hydrogen, on electric vehicles, on offshore wind, on all the ways that you can reduce the cost of energy for people with green technology.”

Downing Street has denied that, given the Ukraine war’s impact on energy supplies, it is soft-pedalling its commitment to net-zero carbon emissions -- after India joined with China to torpedo a stronger accord at the COP26 climate summit held in Scotland last year.

The UK also has a sizeable Sikh community, and its leaders have been demanding that Johnson raise the case of Scotsman Jagtar Singh Johal, who has been detained without trial in India for more than four years.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2022