Australia’s India strategy needs to get beyond New Delhi

For example, technology engagement with India cannot be understood only through national digital policy. It requires deeper relationships with Karnataka and Telangana, where many of India’s technology services, start-ups and global capability centres are located. Clean energy and critical minerals partnerships require attention to states with industrial demand, renewable energy ambitions and manufacturing capacity. Education and skills partnerships need to move beyond student recruitment and connect Australian institutions with Indian states seeking workforce development.

This is also a diplomatic challenge. Australia’s national relationship with India is strong, but national diplomacy alone will not deliver business outcomes. State governments, trade offices, universities and business chambers need to be better coordinated. The Indian diaspora in Australia should be treated as a strategic bridge to state-level knowledge, not only as a symbol of people-to-people ties.

The risk is that Australia continues to celebrate the India relationship at a high level while firms remain hesitant at the operational level. India then remains admired, but under-engaged.

This has been a recurring problem. Australian businesses often describe India as important, but difficult. They see the scale, but not always the pathways. They recognise the opportunity, but struggle to build the patience, relationships and local understanding required to act on it. A sharper state-level approach would help convert diplomatic warmth into commercial and institutional depth.

There is also a strategic reason to get this right. As I argued recently in Asialink Insights (Opens in new window), Australia needs to see India as more than a market. India is becoming a capability platform across technology, services, digital infrastructure, clean energy, education and talent. But capabilities are built in places. They are embedded in cities, institutions, firms, universities and state-level networks. If Australia wants to benefit from India’s rise, it must learn to engage those networks more effectively.

The question is no longer whether India matters to Australia. It clearly does. The better question is whether Australia has built the institutional capability to engage the many Indias where much of the economic action now takes place.

That level is not only New Delhi. It is India’s states.

The states are where Australia’s India strategy has to start.