beyondbrics

The UK is pulling out the stops to cement what the new Conservative government calls a “special relationship” with India, one of the world’s most promising emerging markets and its former colony.

Yet a moment of top level forgetfulness by New Delhi at the weekend suggests David Cameron, the UK prime minister, needs to try harder.

After complaining that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair paid scant attention to a rising Indian economy, Mr Cameron is following up a visit by the biggest official delegation since independence in 1947 with a flurry of ministerial visits.

On the heels of David Willetts, the universities minister, Liam Fox, the defence minister, and Andrew Mitchell, the minister for international development, are arriving this week.

Their purpose is to turn a nostalgic attachment based on colonial history into a more modern, business-led relationship between the two countries. Willetts was promoting research, space cooperation and vocational training. Fox will lend muscle to selling India the Eurofighter Typhoon for its jet fighter strike force. Mitchell, meanwhile, will be weighing whether rising India is a worthy recipient of UK aid.

Downing Street, however, plainly needs more of a direct line into Race Course Road, the residence of Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister.

Speaking at the Hindustan Leadership summit at the weekend, 78-year old Singh failed to recall Cameron’s name.

When listing the leaders of the permanent five United Nations Security Council members, Singh started with US President Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, but stumbled when he came to the UK. After a couple of goes at remembering the name of its leader, Singh simply opted for the “UK’s prime minister” and moved on to China and Russia.

On his return to London from a disappointing trip to Beijing and the G20 in Seoul earlier this month, Cameron insisted that the UK was still a “great economic power” and that competition between the UK and the rising economies of India and China was not a “zero sum game”.

Cameron can take some comfort that his obscurity comes at the hands of the more memorable Obama, who was the last world leader in town, and Sarkozy, the next.

His eclipse is likewise shared by Gordon Brown, the UK’s former prime minister. Singh described Obama as the “father of the G20″ during his recent visit to the Indian capital – a title Brown could have once claimed rightfully for himself.

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