Medvedev's visit to India redefines relations

Early this month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev became the first leader to visit India after the Nov 26 terrorist attacks on the country's commercial capital, Mumbai. In spite of multiple hurdles Medvedev, managed to strike a cord with India's leaders and to sign 10 important agreements.

In Medvedev's words, his three-day visit to New Delhi was aimed at redefining the tenor of Russia-India relations beyond the traditional military-centric, buy-and-sell, hard-cash format, to a far more broad-based strategic partnership in tune with his resolve to revive Russia's stature as a global power.

Accordingly, their deliberations in New Delhi sought to convey how Russia-India relations had moved beyond nuclear and defense cooperation and onto new areas of technology transfers and joint production in sectors from metals and machine building to banking and finance management, power-generation, pharmaceuticals, space explorations, biotechnology, information technology, hotels and tourism.