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At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in September, Narendra Modi stood beside Xi Jinping for the first time in seven years. It came just weeks after the Trump administration hit India with new tariffs for buying Russian oil.

India’s balancing act has left many in the West uneasy. On the one hand, its oil trade helps fund Putin’s war machine. On the other, New Delhi continues to deepen ties with Washington and its allies. Is India drifting towards Moscow and Beijing – or simply pursuing its long-time strategy of non-alignment?

Join us to make sense of India’s choices, and to ask whether the West risks pushing the world’s largest democracy away at a critical moment in global politics.

Sambit Bhattacharyya

Sambit Bhattacharyya is a Professor of Economics and Head of Department of Economics at the University of Sussex. Prior to joining Sussex, he has held academic positions at the University of Oxford and the Australian National University. He holds a PhD in Economics and has made sustained and significant contributions to the fields of development economics, macroeconomics and political economy. He has published widely and received research grants from the European Commission, UK Government, UK Research Councils, Private Sector funders, and the Australian Research Council. His work is widely cited and he has appeared on TV and Radio and sat on expert government panels.

Bob Blackman CBE MP

Bob Blackman CBE MP has been a long-standing friend of India. Bob is the Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for British Hindus and was one of the first non-Indian nationals to receive a Padma Shree award. Through his role as the Member of Parliament for Harrow East, Bob has raised the plight and persecution of Hindus around the world and ensured the Indian diaspora here are recognised for their contribution.

Dr Theo Zenou

Dr Theo Zenou is a Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He recently completed a PhD in history at Cambridge University, where he also taught undergraduates. He has been a Theodore Sorensen Fellow at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and a Visiting Researcher at Boston University. Theo has written features, essays and reviews for The Washington Post, The Economist, FT, The Guardian, The Times and Sunday Times, TLS, Spectator and others. Prior to his doctorate, he worked in TV for several years.