Analysis Of Sansad TV Discussion: ”2nd India-Nordic Summit”
Relevance
”GS 2: Groupings & Agreements Involving India and/or Affecting India’s Interests”
Context
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi has just participated in the 2nd India-Nordic Summit on May 04, 2022.
- Prime Ministers of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Norway have also participated in the summit.
- The summit is being hosted by Denmark.
Background
- The 1st India-Nordic Summit took place in 2018 in Stockholm.
- The second summit, earlier scheduled to take place in June 2021, has been re-convened.
- The 2018 India-Nordic Summit reiterated the six countries’ commitment to global security, economic growth, innovation and climate change.
Why Nordic Countries are important to India?
- Nordic countries collectively represent an economy of more than $1.6 trillion.
- Total bilateral trade in goods and services between India and the Nordic countries is $13 billion.
- All these countries figure among the top achievers in several areas of human endeavour, particularly innovation, clean energy, green technologies, and education.
About Nordic countries of Europe
- The Nordic Countries are a group of countries in northern Europe.
- There are 5 Nordic countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland.
- Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are constitutional monarchies and parliamentary democracies. Finland and
- Iceland are democratic republics.
- Iceland’s parliament, the Althing, is the oldest parliament in the world.
- Sweden is the largest and most populous of the Nordic countries. Iceland is the least populous. Denmark is the smallest.
Why India is important for the Nordic countries?
- It makes eminent political and economic sense for these countries also to step up their engagement with India.
- India is the third-largest global economy at $9 trillion in purchasing power parity terms.
- It is also the fastest-growing major economy with annual GDP growth of 7.4% in 2022-23.
- Several wide-ranging initiatives have been taken by India in recent years, including the goods and services tax, etc., which have significantly increased its attractiveness as a business and investment destination.
- India presents an ideal opportunity to these countries because of its large market as also its youth dividend.
- Maintaining peace, ensuring security and promoting sustainable economic development of the Arctic Region is another area which presents immense possibilities to strengthen the bilateral partnership.
Significance Of Nordic Summit For India
- The significance of this event for India can be assessed from the fact that the US is the only other country with which the Nordic states have an engagement at the summit level.
- India Nordic Summit helps in expanding India’s multifaceted cooperation with the Nordic region.
- This years’ summit focused on subjects like post-pandemic economic recovery, climate change, innovation and technology, renewable energy, the evolving global security scenario and India-Nordic cooperation in the Arctic region.
- Nordic countries are important partners for India in sustainability, renewable energy, digitisation and innovation.
- Matters of regional and global interests also came up for discussion.
- The principal focus of the Summit was how to carry forward the agenda of bilateral engagement between India and the Nordic countries.
- Over the last four years, PM Modi has interacted extensively with all the Nordic leaders.
- These present enormous opportunities for India to plug into the strengths of these countries to mutual benefit.