India and Kuwait established diplomatic relations in 1962, and the ties rest on geographic proximity, historical maritime trade across the Arabian Sea, energy supply and a large Indian community. The turning point of the modern relationship was the Indian Prime Minister's official visit to Kuwait on 21-22 December 2024 — the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to Kuwait in 43 years. On that visit the two sides agreed to elevate the relationship to a Strategic Partnership, committing to structured cooperation across political, trade, investment, defence, security, energy, culture, education, technology and people-to-people ties, and signed the MoU on Defence Cooperation covering areas such as joint military exercises, training, coastal defence and maritime safety. Kuwait was also chairing the Gulf Cooperation Council at the time, and supported deepening India-GCC cooperation under the recently adopted Joint Action Plan. A Joint Defence Committee is the standard institutional device for turning such an MoU into a working relationship: it gives the two defence establishments a recurring, agenda-driven forum rather than leaving cooperation to episodic ministerial visits — which is why this first meeting, though administratively modest, is the point at which the December 2024 MoU begins to operate.

India's Gulf policy has moved over the past decade from a labour-and-oil relationship to one that includes defence. Kuwait was the outlier: warm ties, an enormous Indian community, energy supply — but no standing defence mechanism. The JDC closes that gap and makes Kuwait the latest Gulf state with an institutional defence channel to New Delhi, alongside the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar. Two features of this first meeting show what India wants from it. Military medicine and staff talks are low-cost confidence-builders that generate routine contact; the defence industry and R&D items, backed by the presence of the Department of Defence Production and DRDO and the visit to DPSU Bhawan, point at defence exports. For Kuwait, sitting between Iraq and Saudi Arabia at the head of a contested waterway, diversifying defence partnerships is a standing strategic interest.