Narendra Modi last week won the largest election on earth, securing himself another five-year term as India's Prime Minister.

Key points: India is Australia's fifth-largest trade partner

India is Australia's fifth-largest trade partner The countries are co-operating on defence against a backdrop of rising Chinese power

The countries are co-operating on defence against a backdrop of rising Chinese power Experts say Australia should harness the Indian diaspora's knowledge to boost relations

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His right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was projected to lose some ground, but in fact, increased its majority in a landslide.

The party is now projected to win more than 300 of the 542 seats in the lower house of Parliament.

Despite record levels of unemployment and rising rural poverty, the BJP managed to nab six times the number of seats won by the main opposition party, Rahul Gandhi's Indian National Congress.

So, what does Mr Modi's resounding victory mean for Australia?

Cricket, curry and the Commonwealth

An oft-repeated cliche holds that the only things Australia and India have in common are the three Cs: cricket, curry and the Commonwealth.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison frequently alludes to his love of curry, including using cooking the dish as an analogy for the Delhi-Canberra relationship at an event last November.

But there is much more to relations between the two countries, something Mr Morrison himself appears to recognise.

Fresh off the back of his own surprise re-election, Mr Morrison was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Mr Modi on his return to power.

In 2014, Mr Modi also became the first Indian Prime Minister to address Australia's Parliament.

Record unemployment appears not to have deterred millions of voters from supporting Narendra Modi's return to power. ( AP: Altaf Qadri )

"Narendra Modi's huge mandate clearly states there's a lot of potential in terms of pushing this relationship to a different trajectory of growth and development," said Natasha Jha Bhaskar, general manager at Newland Global Group, a corporate advisory firm with a focus on the India-Australia trade and investment space.

Former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Peter Varghese last year released a report recommending that India should become one of Australia's top three export destinations by 2035.

"India is the world's fastest-growing major economy and offers more opportunity for Australian business over the next 20 years than any other single market," said Mr Morrison, responding to the report.

"Today's steps are only the first on a long journey that will see Australia and India grow together."

And Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne reinforced the relationship's importance last year, saying India is "central to Australia's vision to ensuring that the Indo-Pacific makes a leading contribution to global prosperity and security".

Mr Morrison has said that India offers more opportunity for Australian business than any other market. ( AAP: Mick Tsikas )

However imperfect, India is the world's largest democracy, making it an important counterweight in the region to China's authoritarian capitalist model.

"India-Australia defence ties are stronger than they have ever been," Teesta Prakash, a researcher at Griffith University, told the ABC.

The Australian and Indian navies conducted the AUSINDEX bilateral exercise last month in an effort to "hone their anti-submarine warfare capabilities in support of a stable and secure Indian Ocean", according to Australia's Department of Defence.

That military cooperation was initiated under the Coalition in 2015, but it's trade that has drawn much of Australia's focus — with mixed results.

The AUSINDEX bilateral naval exercise was first held in 2015. ( ABC News: David Weber )

Coal diplomacy

India and Australia began negotiations on a bilateral free trade agreement back in 2011, but talks have since stalled as both countries seek to protect their agricultural sectors.

While India is only Australia's fifth-largest trading partner, two-way trade in goods and services grew in value from $13.6 billion in 2007 to $27.5 billion in 2017.

Given that Standard Chartered Bank predicts India will have the second-largest nominal GDP after China by 2030, its economy presents myriad opportunities for Australia.

"The initiative largely has to come from the Australian side," Ms Baskar said.

"India today is a market of enormous scale and there are a lot of countries competing for its attention."

Coal, which became Australia's largest export earner in 2018, is in high demand from India.

And a Coalition win was good news for Indian mining giant Adani's controversial Carmichael mine project in central Queensland.

The Adani mine project has been met with fierce opposition from climate activists. ( Flickr: Galilee Blockade )

Days after Labor was trounced in Queensland by the Coalition, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced that she was pushing to expedite environmental approvals.

"From India's perspective, it needs thermal coal to fulfil its rapidly growing energy demands and Australian coal is cleaner than other sources," Ms Prakash, of Griffith University, told the ABC.

"Many industrialists — including Gautam Adani, the owner of Adani group — have significant clout in the Modi Government and significant influence over its foreign economic policy."

According to Professor Raghbendra Jha, executive director of the Australia South Asia Research Centre at the Australian National University, "the investment partnership between India and Australia is far more robust than the trade partnership".

Desire to protect Indian farmers has inhibited a free trade agreement with Australia. ( Reuters: Amit Dave )

"The opportunities for two-way investment are really quite amazing. There's a whole agricultural sector in India that needs to invest in warehousing, storage, transport and so many other things," he told the ABC.

"Australia has a very strong competitive advantage in that area."

Diaspora an 'untapped resource'

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Meanwhile, the Indian diaspora in Australia numbers almost 700,000 and is predicted to outnumber Chinese-born Australians by 2031, reaching 1.4 million.

Canberra should better capitalise on Australia's "highly-educated, employable and wealthy" Indian diaspora, Mr Varghese said.

He described the community as a "national asset" to "advance economic links and build transnational networks for trade, investment and innovation".

"The Indian diaspora can be ambassadors for Australia in India. India is very relationship-driven," Ms Baskar said.

They represent a "living bridge" between the two nations, she said.

Indian-born residents already account for about 3 to 4 per cent of the population in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne.

They also constitute the country's second-largest group of international students.

"Many of the expatriate Indians living in Australia have good business links in India," Professor Jha said.

"The Australian Government should be able to exploit that inherent knowledge that these people have about business conditions in India."