After all the globetrotting, it’s now time for Narendra Modi to play host. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in India on a three-day trip. While Merkel’s India jaunt may not have elicited as much excitement as Barrack Obama’s visit, it is an equally significant event since Germany, the biggest economy in the European Union (EU), is also India’s largest trading partner in the EU.

Modi and Merkel: A match made in heaven?

The collaboration had begun in April this year when Prime Minister Modi had made a three-day visit to Germany, where Merkel and he had jointly opened the world’s biggest industrial trade fair, “Hannover Messe”, held in Germany. Merkel more than reciprocated when she flew this time in a military cargo plane to Delhi after her official plane broke down.

But they have more in common: like Modi calls himself a proud Hindu, Merkel too wears her religion on her sleeves. “We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don’t accept them don’t have a place here,” said the chancellor once, exhorting immigrants to embrace Christianity.  Merkel is a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party – a conservative political party whose politics, on many levels, is similar to that of Bharatiya Janata Party.

Highs and lows

India’s relationship with Germany over the past many decades has been erratic. A few months before India got Independence in 1947, Jawahar Lal Nehru called for the reunification of the then divided Germany. Despite pressure from the USSR, both Nehru, and later Indira Gandhi, refused to recognise East Germany till as late as the 1970s when West Germany no longer objected. Germany, however, sided with Portugal when Indian troops occupied Goa in 1961. A decade later, in 1971, Germany also opposed India’s role in the creation of Bangladesh.

It was only after Germany’s reunification in 1990, which was soon followed by India opening up its economy the next year that the economic ties were strengthened. The volume of trade between India and Germany went up from 2.7 billion euros in 1990 to 13.4 billion euros by 2008.

Modi’s Make In India partner

In 2014, the two countries engaged in bilateral trade worth almost 16 billion euros – 15.96 billions to be precise. Germany also happened to be the seventh largest foreign investor last year. According to Reserve Bank of India statistics, Germany invested 942 million US dollars in India through foreign direct investment last year. Indian investors have also put in over 6 billion US dollars in Germany over the last few years. There are also as many as 600 Indo-German collaborations and over 600 joint ventures.

Owing to a slump in the Indian economy, bilateral trade between the two countries has declined in the last three years. India’s German imports dropped from 9.2 to 8.9 billion dollar euros in the previous year. But while the economic depression has slowed down the rate of growth, the overall volume continues to grow.

On Merkel’s present visit, the two countries have already signed deals worth 2.3 billion dollars on German investment in developing India’s clean energy corridors and solar energy industry. Merkel called the reforms initiated by the Modi government in last 15 months as “promising”, and the two countries signed a deal to fast-track business approvals. Germany is, in short, instrumental to the success of Modi’s Make In India initiative.

So, will Germany be our best friends anytime soon?

We wish, for that would mean much bonding over great German beer. While, according to a BBC World Service survey, Indians seem to largely like Germany (only six per cent respondents held a negative view of Germany’s influence), the same survey revealed that Germans are not exactly fond of us. As many as 68 per cent Germans who participated in the survey seemed to have a negative view of India’s influence. That is a monumentally high number (even Pakistanis like us more than that). But then these numbers are from June last year.

In April this year, everyone got a pleasant diplomatic shock when Michael Steiner, Germany’s then ambassador to India, produced a YouTube video. The video, a parody of a popular Hindi song Kal Ho Naa Ho, was a love triangle featuring Steiner, his wife Eliese, and India’s former External Affairs minister Salman Khurshid. Titled “Lebe jetzt”, which in German roughly translates into ‘Live the moment to the fullest’, the video was formally launched at the launch at the German Embassy in Delhi.

When it comes to soft power, though, nothing beats the popularity of German cars as status symbol in India. Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi are the most popular high-end car brands in India, with an annual combined sale of almost 30,000. In 2014, Volkswagen announced that it would invest Rs 1,500 crore over the next five years to set up a diesel engine manufacturing facility. That brings us back to Modi: An example of how German investment could spur the Make In India programme is the German car manufacturer Volkswagen’s plans to scale-up its manufacturing facility in India.

Brace up for some Modi-Merkel magic then, people.