Prime Minister Narendra Modi emplanes for Warsaw (Poland), in New Delhi, Thursday, Aug. 21, 2024.
Credit: PTI Photo
Warsaw: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's discussions with the Polish leadership during his two-day visit will allow the two sides to exchange views at the top level on a variety of subjects and it will be kind of a real "useful exchange" of views, India's top diplomat here said.
Prime Minister Modi's visit to Poland is the first trip by an Indian Prime Minister to the country in the past 45 years. During his stay in Poland, Modi will meet President Andrzej Sebastian Duda and hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
"The discussions that the Prime Minister will hold with the Polish leadership will allow the two sides to exchange views at the top level on a variety of subjects, and that kind of detailed discussion we have not had in a certain period now. So it will be a kind of a real useful exchange of views," Indian Ambassador to Poland Nagma Mohamed Mallick told PTI Videos here.
Noting that Poland is a significant Member of the European Union, she said it is a large and very successful economy in Central Europe and the Indian business and trade are already quite good and growing but there is scope for them to do better.
She said that the Social Security Agreement is ready for signature and added that just a couple of small provisions of the enabling provisions are left to be done. "And they can be done, very, very quickly. And so that is the other thing that will be coming out of the visit, and that'll be another important outcome."
"So I mean, all in all, I can say that this visit, coming after many years, is still in view of all the different strands of the geopolitical developments going on in this part of the world, and Prime Minister Modi's undoubted international stature and the weight and the ideas and his personal weight that he brings to these discussions, to these meetings, I think these things will together really make a difference to the bilateral relationship,” the ambassador said.
She said the meeting between the two sides will give a chance to explore other avenues.
On people-to-people connection, she said the Prime Minister will get to know through all of these people, the kind of openness to India's cultural ethos that the Polish people have, their love for yoga, their openness to Ayurveda, their fondness for Indian movies and their deep reverence and scholarship in Sanskrit literature.
"So all of these things, I think, will give both sides much to recognize, much to think about, and they will give the two sides a kind of pathway ahead on how to broaden and widen the relationship," she added.
She said that the economic relationship between the two countries is growing.
"We have a trade turnover of $6 billion. The balance of trade is very much in India's favour. We import from Poland, machinery, chemicals, and we export to Poland machinery, machine tools, garments and textiles, chemicals, other kinds of chemicals in organic and some consumer items like plastics. So I can say that the trade relationship is fairly diversified. There is scope for more," she added.
She said that the Indian investment in Poland amounts to around USD 3 billion. "There are all the major Indian IT companies represented here. There are these manufacturing things also here. There are packaging units...There are a variety of areas in which our investors have invested."
"So I believe that the scope for Indian managerial smarts to do well here, to turn around other companies, to make them more profitable, to add value to the economy still exists," she said.
"I do anticipate that the Prime Minister's visit here would give a greater knowledge of each other's possibilities. Yeah, a greater understanding on both sides of the possibilities of the market, the possibilities that the bilateral trade relationship, the economic relationship, in general, possesses," the envoy said.
She described it as a "very important" visit by Prime Minister Modi to Poland. It is his first visit to central Europe and it is a visit by a (Indian) Prime Minister after decades.
"So, it holds a lot of symbolic importance. The prime minister will pay his respects at three memorials," the ambassador said.
The first is the memorial to Jam Saheb of Nawanagar Memorial, known here as affectionately as 'Good Maharaja', who provided refuge to over 1,000 Polish children who escaped the Soviet Union. He will also visit the Monument to the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Prime Minister Modi will also meet with a cross-section of Polish people to understand the society. He will also meet with the Indologists.
"There are many great Polish scholars who have studied Sanskrit, who have studied ancient India. They have translated so many of these texts, the Vedas, the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and currently the Mahabharata is being translated directly from Sanskrit to Polish at the University of Warsaw," the ambassador added.