When French President laced up his running shoes at dawn in Mumbai this Tuesday, weaving past the sea-facing promenade in a city still rubbing sleep from its eyes, he was doing more than enjoying a morning jog. He was signalling something deeper — that France's relationship with India is no longer the formal, careful diplomacy of conference rooms. It has become something warmer, more personal, and strikingly more ambitious than anything the two countries have attempted before.

By the time the two leaders sat down at Lok Bhavan later that afternoon, the shape of that ambition had become unmistakably clear. What emerged from Mumbai on February 17, 2026 was not merely a diplomatic upgrade. It was a shared scientific and technological manifesto — a statement that France and India together intend to help write the rules of the world that is coming.

"India-France partnership knows no boundary," Indian Prime Minister said at their joint press conference. "In today's era of uncertainties, this partnership is a force for global stability and progress." Standing beside him, French President echoed that spirit, describing the relationship as "truly remarkable and unique" and reiterating that both nations are determined not to "be subjected to any form of hegemony" or dragged into conflicts they did not start.

That shared instinct for independence is precisely what makes the science emerging from this partnership so consequential.

The Train That Connects Two Worlds

Start with something as tangible as steel and speed: the high-speed rail network. France is the home of the TGV, one of the great engineering achievements of the 20th century, a system that knitted together a sprawling nation at 300 kilometres per hour and transformed how Europeans think about distance and time. India, with its 1.4 billion people and its vast, energetic interior, is in the middle of its own infrastructure revolution.

The technology transfer that French President formally identified on Tuesday — bringing French high-speed rail expertise to Indian tracks — is not simply a matter of selling trains. It is about transferring the engineering culture, the safety standards, the manufacturing precision, and the long-term operational knowledge that turned the TGV from an audacious experiment into a national institution. When Indian engineers and French engineers work side by side to build and eventually manufacture high-speed rail systems in India, both sides gain. France finds a market of continental scale. India gains mastery over technology it can then adapt, improve, and eventually export to the rest of the developing world.

This is the logic of technology partnership at its most powerful — not aid, not dependency, but genuine co-creation between equals.

Clean Energy: The Race We Cannot Afford to Lose

India is already one of the world's leading installers of solar capacity, and the International Solar Alliance — co-founded by India and France — has become one of the more quietly effective multilateral initiatives of the past decade. But clean energy cooperation now goes well beyond solar panels on rooftops.

France brings to this partnership something most countries cannot offer: decades of experience operating civil nuclear power at massive scale, the engineering depth behind one of Europe's most sophisticated renewable energy grids, and a research ecosystem that has been working on the materials science of energy transition long before it became fashionable. The renewal of the memorandum of understanding on renewable energy cooperation signed this week extends a partnership that is already bearing fruit, and places both countries squarely in the middle of the global conversation about what a credible energy transition actually looks like.

Clean energy is not just about climate. It is about who controls the technologies, the supply chains, and the intellectual property that will power the global economy for the next century. France and India working together on this means that two large, strategically independent democracies are shaping that future rather than receiving it.

Critical Minerals: The Quiet Foundation of Modern Technology

Perhaps no area announced on Tuesday is more geopolitically significant than cooperation on critical minerals. The batteries in electric vehicles, the permanent magnets in wind turbines, the semiconductors in artificial intelligence servers — all of them depend on a handful of elements whose supply chains are today uncomfortably concentrated in a small number of countries.

Both France and India understand that technological sovereignty begins in the ground. Indian Prime Minister put it plainly: "Today we are strengthening our cooperation in critical minerals, biotechnology, and advanced materials." France, with its scientific expertise in materials processing and its strategic interest in diversifying supply chains, and India, with its geological resources and its growing refining capacity, are natural partners in building a more resilient supply chain that serves both nations and their allies.

This is quiet but foundational work. The country that secures access to lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, and the processing technologies to turn them into usable materials will be in a strong position to influence the industries that depend on them. France and India cooperating here is not a transaction — it is a long-term strategic alignment that makes both countries more capable of acting independently in a world where resource competition is intensifying.

Biotechnology and Advanced Materials: Science at the Frontier

Biotechnology has moved from the laboratory to the centre of national strategy faster than almost anyone anticipated. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that the country with the fastest vaccine development and manufacturing capacity holds a profound advantage, both in protecting its own people and in projecting influence abroad. India, home to the world's largest vaccine manufacturing capacity, and France, with its world-class research institutions and pharmaceutical industry, are a natural combination.

Advanced materials — the engineered substances that make modern aerospace, electronics, and medicine possible — represent another frontier where the partnership is deepening. From the carbon-fibre composites that give the Rafale fighter jet its performance to the specialised alloys needed for the aero-engines of the future, materials science sits at the intersection of defence capability and industrial competitiveness. The announcement of a National Centre of Alliance for Skilling in Aeronautics is a direct investment in building the human talent pipeline that will keep this partnership producing real results for decades to come.

Three New Centres That Could Change Everything

The most concrete science announcement of the day came in the form of three new joint institutions that both leaders inaugurated on Tuesday. The Indo-French Centre for AI in Health will bring together researchers from both countries to apply artificial intelligence to medicine — a field where the potential to improve diagnosis, accelerate drug discovery, and personalise treatment is genuinely transformative. The Indo-French Centre for Digital Sciences and Technology extends that collaboration into the broader digital infrastructure that is rapidly becoming as fundamental to national capability as electricity. And the Indo-French Centre for Aeronautics and Allied Areas will anchor the aerospace technology transfer that supports both defence cooperation and civilian aviation.

"These are not just institutions," Indian Prime Minister said. "They are future-building platforms." From a French perspective, they represent something equally significant: permanent, institutionalised scientific relationships that will outlast any individual government or diplomatic moment. Research centres develop their own momentum. They build careers, train generations of scientists, and generate intellectual property. They are how nations embed themselves in each other's futures.

Students, Researchers, and the Human Dimension

All of this infrastructure and scientific ambition ultimately depend on people — on young researchers who pack their bags and move to a foreign city to learn something new, on professors who build relationships across time zones, on entrepreneurs who see an opportunity in the gap between what exists in one country and what is needed in another.

The enhancement of student and researcher mobility announced on Tuesday is not a footnote. It is arguably the most important long-term investment in the partnership. France has already been moving to simplify the visa experience for Indian citizens, and French President confirmed that Paris is studying the elimination of transit visa requirements entirely. When a young biologist from Chennai can spend a year in Lyon without bureaucratic obstacles, or when an engineer from Toulouse can spend a semester at IIT Mumbai without losing momentum in their career, the partnership becomes something that belongs to the next generation rather than just to the leaders who signed the documents.

French President captured the spirit of this at the India-France Innovation Forum. Standing in a city he described as "a city in perpetual motion and reaching towards the future," he said simply: "The question is no longer whether India innovates. The question is, who will innovate with India? And France is the only clear answer. We are here. We want to be here with you. And we are not leaving."

Startups, MSMEs, and the Engine of Practical Innovation

Big research centres and government agreements matter, but the texture of an innovation economy is woven by the thousands of small and medium enterprises and startups that translate scientific insight into products people actually use. Modi stressed this explicitly: "Innovation doesn't happen in isolation, but through collaboration. Our goal during the India-France Year of Innovation is to strengthen people-to-people connections. We will build strong networks between startups and MSMEs."

France's own startup ecosystem — centered in Paris but spreading rapidly to Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, and beyond — has matured dramatically in the past decade. Indian startups have global ambitions and access to one of the world's largest and fastest-growing domestic markets. The India-France Innovation Network, launched formally today to connect businesses, incubators, research bodies, and industry leaders in both countries, is a practical mechanism for turning those complementary strengths into something commercially real.

Reform of Global Institutions: The Bigger Picture

Woven through all of Tuesday's announcements was a consistent theme that deserves recognition: both leaders believe that the institutions governing the global order need to be reformed, and that those reforms will only produce results that actually work if the Global South is fully part of designing them.

"We are unanimous that reform of global institutions will solve global challenges," Indian Prime Minister said. French President reinforced this, noting that both nations are working on a "common roadmap to address global challenges distinct from hegemony" — and he backed that with action, extending to India a formal invitation to the G7 summit in Évian this June.

This matters for science and technology because the international frameworks that govern research funding, intellectual property, technology transfer, and the ethical use of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence were largely built by a small group of wealthy nations in a different era. France, as a G7 chair, and India, as a BRICS chair, sitting in the same room and pointing in the same direction, is a signal that the centre of gravity in those conversations is shifting. A French-Indian partnership that helps redesign those institutions will shape the conditions under which science is practiced globally for a generation.

From Mumbai to the World

There is a temptation, when covering diplomatic summits, to note the grandeur of the announcements and then wait to see how much actually materialises. That scepticism is healthy. But it is also worth recognising when the underlying logic of a partnership is genuinely sound.

France brings to this relationship some of the deepest pools of scientific and engineering expertise in the world, a tradition of strategic independence, and a network of institutions — from CNRS to CEA to INRIA — that have been generating fundamental discoveries for generations. India brings scale, demographic energy, an increasingly sophisticated innovation ecosystem, and a domestic market large enough to make new technologies viable at global cost.

When those complementary strengths are channelled through well-designed institutions, open student exchanges, genuine technology transfer and a shared commitment to the kind of multilateralism that produces global public goods rather than private advantages, the result is something that matters well beyond the borders of either country.

The India-France Year of Innovation 2026 begins today. The centres are being built. The researchers are beginning to move. The conversations between entrepreneurs in Bangalore and Lyon are starting.

Whatever the global uncertainties ahead, this much seems clear: France and India have decided that the future is something they want to build together. And for anyone who cares about where the next generation of science, technology, and global governance comes from, that is very good news indeed.

References: France 24 (February 17, 2026); ABC News International (February 17, 2026); The Statesman (February 17, 2026); India TV News Live Updates (February 17, 2026); Republic World (February 17, 2026); IANS/ProKerala (February 17, 2026); News9Live (February 17, 2026); Social News XYZ (February 17, 2026).