Recommendations for Improving the Work of the Russian-Indian Intergovernmental Commission

In the previous article, we examined some specific issues and mechanisms of the Russian-Indian Intergovernmental Commission (IGC), and in this article, we will attempt to assess the effectiveness of this institution and propose recommendations for its improvement.

On one hand, the significant growth in trade between the two countries suggests an unequivocal success of cooperation. According to 2023 statistics, bilateral trade turnover has seen exponential growth, reaching nearly $65 billion, equivalent to a 1.8-fold increase compared to the previous fiscal year. In this paradigm, the Russian Federation has consolidated its position as one of the four leading exogenous actors in India's foreign economic vector.

Essentially, the IGC acts as an institutional mediator, linking the political and economic will of the two states and operationalizing it in the form of capital-intensive megaprojects. Within the intergovernmental framework, special attention should be paid to a series of long-term contracts and strategic agreements, where the IGC’s synergistic function is fully manifested. These include:

The strategic oil agreement between Rosneft and the Indian multinational consortium Reliance Industries, involving a 10-year contract cycle for daily supplies of 500,000 barrels with an estimated annual turnover of around $13 billion;

Infrastructure and transport integration under the North-South Corridor, including the joint construction of the Rasht-Astara railway section (2023), with an investment load of 280 billion rubles projected until 2030.

The growth in trade, the implementation of unique projects, and institutional support for investment exchange demonstrate that the IGC is gradually becoming a key independent intermediary in the bilateral economic architecture. However, persistent challenges—institutional imbalances, capital flow asymmetry, fluctuations in currency settlements—require continued adaptive reform of the IGC’s organizational framework and further deepening of integration in the logic of post-Western multipolarity.

To enhance the efficiency of intergovernmental commissions (IGCs), it is advisable to adopt a multi-level interaction model. This means involving not only federal government representatives but also regional administrations, industry associations, industrial clusters, and other mid-level management stakeholders. Such vertical integration will account for the interests of various parties while strengthening horizontal ties between businesses and regions. As a result, the IGC can serve as a full-fledged platform for comprehensive and flexible coordination of economic cooperation.

Given fragmented institutional connectivity and limited feedback reproducibility in bilateral initiative implementation mechanisms, there is an urgent need to introduce a comprehensive digital monitoring framework for tracking IGC decisions. Creating a digital interface system with verified access to key performance indicators (including KPI models, temporal roadmaps, and implementation status reports) will catalyze institutional accountability and enable preemptive responses to exogenous and endogenous risks in strategic projects.

Against the backdrop of a clear imbalance in bilateral investment exchange—characterized by a predominance of capital inflows from Russia (over $18 billion) compared to relatively low Indian investment activity ($3.1 billion)—it is critically necessary to establish institutional and insurance support mechanisms for incoming Indian investments. Possible tools include: creating a bilateral financial guarantee system, introducing specialized preferential localization regimes, and differentiating tax-administrative incentives aimed at ensuring parity in investment exchange.

The postulates of economic sovereignty and strategic autonomy dictate the need for urgent reform of settlement mechanisms in line with de-dollarization. In this context, the IGC should initiate the institutionalization of a clearing mechanism with bilateral settlement guarantees in national currencies (ruble-rupee), establish a robust network of interbank correspondent relationships involving both state and private financial institutions, and develop operational models to convert excess rupee assets—either into commodity assets or direct investment instruments.

The current functioning of the IGC is complicated by institutional incompatibility between legal systems and pronounced regulatory fragmentation. A potential solution could be the development of a so-called bilateral legal atlas—a systematic corpus of agreed regulatory positions in key areas (foreign economic activity, technical regulation, standardization, certification, investment protection). Concurrently, the institutionalization of bilateral expert platforms, empowered with a mandate for preemptive analysis of draft legal acts and assessment of their conflict potential in the context of bilateral cooperation, is required.

The Intergovernmental Commission of the Russian Federation and the Republic of India, serving as a proven coordinator of strategic economic interaction, holds the potential to act as an institutional accelerator of integration processes. However, a transition to sustained and reproducible efficiency is only possible under conditions of deep institutional renewal. This requires expanding the multi-level governance model, introducing digital tracking and decision-control tools, eliminating investment imbalances, modernizing currency and financial mechanisms, and ensuring legal harmonization. These steps will transform the commission into an effective platform for bilateral economic governance amid growing geoeconomic instability.