Narendra Modi’s participation in the G7 summit at Évian this week marks India’s 13th appearance at the forum and the Prime Minister’s seventh in a row since 2019. Fittingly, India’s engagement with the grouping began at Évian itself, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was invited in 2003, and continued with Manmohan Singh between 2005 and 2009.

That India is a regular invitee reflects a deepening mutual engagement, rooted in the country’s economic transformation since the 1990s and its growing salience in the international system. During the Cold War, India placed most of its economic and political eggs in the Russian basket. The Soviet collapse of 1991, coinciding with the breakdown of India’s own economic model, forced a restructuring that profoundly altered Delhi’s relationship with the West.

Today, the G7 is the principal destination of Indian exports, absorbing nearly a third of the country’s merchandise shipments. Most of India’s service exports also go to the G7. It is also the main destination for the outward flow of Indian professionals and students; a more restrictive America since Donald Trump’s re-election as president has merely redirected some of those flows to Europe.

Despite the rhetoric about building a new global economic order with Russia and China, India’s economic diplomacy in recent years has been less about BRICS than about deepening ties with the developed West through trade liberalisation. India’s quest for diversification is now less between the West and BRICS than within........

© Indian Express