Three strong currents—1) navigating the geopolitical terrain with powerful countries in an uncertain world; 2) India’s civilisational reach and influence globally; and
3) the option of leveraging the economic and technological leap that India have made after almost 80 years of sovereign independence—these three very interconnected currents were all at play in Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s engagement of the Trinidad and Tobago people and Government during his visit to T&T last week as Foreign Minister of India.
The Indian Foreign Minister has written books about these things, and his public interviews on geopolitical and international relations matters are formidable.
India is interested in the Caribbean because our countries can benefit from South-South cooperation. Such collaboration can lift all our countries and our people up and make the region a success story through effective partnership. India has a lot to offer economically and technologically. By engaging the region effectively and well, India can have a good example of a positive developmental partnership to show the world. A great deal of mutual benefit is, therefore, possible all around.
India can do these things now because the country has more leeway, some operating space that it did not have before. Congressional agreements in the US have made India a US partner in the hemisphere. The preferential relationship that the Prime Minister of T&T has developed with the US also helps to create the possibility of a triangular relationship between T&T, India and the US.
On the other hand, T&T’s heightened relations with India in industry and technology can boost T&T’s capacity to play a more meaningful role as an economic partner in Caricom. T&T can thoughtfully reposition itself as a South-South leader, even as a small state, if it leverages this deepening partnership with India effectively.
India has cooperation agreements signed with Caricom as an entity—15 countries and associated dependencies. China has ten Caribbean countries signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative. And China does not entertain countries aligned with Taiwan.
The United States’ relationship with Caricom is somewhat fractured, as it takes a bilateral, reward-and-punishment approach to engagement with each Caricom member state. So, India is the only big country that is willing to engage Caricom as a whole, while clearly having special bilateral relations with Jamaica, T&T, Guyana and Suriname. The EU and the UK also have well-structured relations with Caricom.
We are already seeing the impact of the India/T&T partnership with the roll-out of Verify TT a month or so ago by iGOVtt, in the launch of an agro-processing facility at Brechin Castle and of the National Prosthetics Centre. India’s Foreign Minister has also talked about the creation of digital public infrastructure, the building of a pharmaceutical industry and deploying advanced technologies in agriculture here.
But two things that will make a massive difference in forex earnings outside energy and in leapfrogging the economy via technology, are investments by Indian manufacturers and service leaders here in T&T for export to the US and Latin America; and, secondly, rolling out the digital stack in a well-structured and integrated way so that identity recognition, payments effectiveness and movement of information all converge to make thousands of transactional and entrepreneurial opportunities possible.
A partial scope agreement between T&T and India in the current 2026 geopolitical climate can become a sophisticated manoeuvre to navigate the America First trade policies of the US, while securing a high-tech future for T&T. This is something the T&T Government should pursue vigorously, because it will open the door to Indian investment for nearshoring to the US as a low tariff gateway as well as through the Caribbean Basin Initiative.
When you couple this nearshoring opportunity with the fact that T&T is seeking to adopt India’s open-source digital stack, which will strengthen identity, payments and finance and facilitate easy movement of information and documents, one can discern a formidable partnership in creating jobs and boosting competitiveness. By leveraging these opportunities effectively, T&T can become the indispensable tech gateway for the entire Caricom region and lead the way to digital sovereignty not just for T&T but for the entire Caricom region.
India’s greatest value to T&T and the region now, beyond culture and civilisation, is investment to boost prosperity and technology to facilitate digital sovereignty and to make our country AI-driven and quantum-ready. This will help this region to leapfrog in a world economy of increasing complexity and uncertainty.
