The warm wel­come at the air­port; Na­maste Mo­di at the Cy­cling Cen­tre in Cou­va; T&T’s ho­n­our­ing of the vis­it­ing prime min­is­ter at Pres­i­dent’s House; his speech to a joint gath­er­ing of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans; the mu­tu­al em­brace of our own Prime Min­is­ter and the prime min­is­ter of the land of her an­ces­tral roots; the food, mu­sic, song, dance, cul­ture and gen­uine warmth and mu­tu­al good will—all of these things have val­ue.

The signed mem­o­ran­da are im­por­tant for gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment re­la­tions, eco­nom­ic re­la­tions, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and for strength­en­ing T&T’s ties with an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant eco­nom­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced coun­try.

In­dia is a coun­try which, de­spite ten­sions from time to time, has main­tained good re­la­tions with the US; a coun­try which, de­spite the Cold War, the col­lapse of the So­vi­et Union, and a range of ex­cess­es by Rus­sia in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na, has main­tained good re­la­tions with Rus­sia.

In­dia shares a mil­i­tarised bor­der with Chi­na, with whom it trades, in­vests and com­petes fierce­ly on many fronts. In­dia al­so shares bor­ders with Pak­istan and Bangladesh, coun­tries which were each part of In­dia at one time and have un­easy re­la­tions with In­dia which, on oc­ca­sion, have test­ed In­dia’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. In­dia is a coun­try which, de­spite walk­ing a tightrope, has made progress and tast­ed suc­cess.

PM Mo­di’s vis­it to T&T fol­lows a re­cent vis­it to Guyana and meet­ing with Cari­com. In­dia is clear­ly in­ter­est­ed in strength­en­ing re­la­tions with the di­as­po­ra and build­ing di­as­po­ra re­la­tions; but it is al­so in­ter­est­ed in build­ing re­la­tions with Cari­com coun­tries. Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di wants to build re­la­tions with Latin Amer­i­ca on our doorstep, and with the coun­tries of Africa, a con­ti­nent with which close to half of our pop­u­la­tion al­so has an­ces­tral ties and cul­tur­al affin­i­ty. Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di brought South Africa in­to the G20 group when he host­ed the G20 an­nu­al meet­ing in In­dia in 2023.

Ar­genti­na is not a mem­ber of BRICS, but Ar­genti­na is an im­por­tant South Amer­i­can coun­try. While Ar­genti­na and Brazil co­op­er­ate, they are of­ten at odds. Pres­i­dent Javier Milei finds favour with US Pres­i­dent Trump, like El Sal­vador Pres­i­dent Nay­ib Bukele. The Brazil­ian leader, Ina­cio Lu­la da Sil­va, is seen by Trump as, per­haps, too far left. But Mo­di re­gards Brazil as an im­por­tant coun­try and is build­ing bridges, al­liances and part­ner­ships in and with the Glob­al South, as he works with de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to strength­en eco­nom­ic bonds and po­lit­i­cal po­si­tions on glob­al af­fairs in a trans­form­ing world.

And even though nei­ther Rus­sia, Chi­na, nor Venezuela were present at the BRICS meet­ing (Venezuela ap­plied for full mem­ber­ship at the last BRICS meet­ing in Rus­sia but Brazil had blocked her), Trump still im­posed an ad­di­tion­al ten per cent tar­iff on all BRICS coun­tries.

The world we are liv­ing in is be­com­ing more com­pli­cat­ed, part­ly be­cause of the twists and turns of US pol­i­cy. Coun­tries are find­ing it nec­es­sary to re­spond to new threats emerg­ing. New al­liances are al­so form­ing as ne­ces­si­ty de­mands and as op­por­tu­ni­ties present them­selves. Some ev­i­dence of this can be dis­cerned in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Cari­com meet­ing in Ja­maica, and in the on­go­ing strength­en­ing of part­ner­ship bonds be­tween France and the UK, and the EU and the UK. The Trump pres­i­den­cy is prompt­ing the world to re­think, to re­cal­i­brate and to re-en­vi­sion.

At the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment, Bar­ba­dos PM Mia Mot­t­ley spoke omi­nous­ly about the Caribbean fac­ing new threats, and hint­ed at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­con­quest or re­coloni­sa­tion. Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness spoke of the re­gion’s po­ten­tial for be­ing mar­gin­alised in a world where pow­er is the dom­i­nant cur­ren­cy.

Our re­gion is not the on­ly one wor­ried. French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron ad­dressed both hous­es of the British Par­lia­ment gath­ered for the oc­ca­sion in Lon­don, and spoke of “re­duc­ing de­pen­den­cy” on Chi­na and the US. In a time of un­cer­tain­ty and the break­down of a rules-based world of rel­a­tive or­der, Macron talked about the need to strength­en the eco­nom­ic val­ue chain, em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of sov­er­eign­ty, flagged lack of in­no­va­tion as a risk fac­tor, and warned that Eu­rope’s fu­ture will be de­cid­ed by those who de­sign al­go­rithms.

If Eu­rope is wor­ried about these things, per­haps we in our part of the world should at least start think­ing about how we in the Caribbean should pre­pare to nav­i­gate the ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven world we will soon be im­mersed in, as com­plex geopol­i­tics plays out.

How much wider is the chasm that we must jump over to avoid be­ing left be­hind? In­dia can be a bridge and de­pend­able part­ner for the Caribbean if we man­age this right.