External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar
Highlights
- India should be practical about how it leverages the international environment: EAM
- Jaishankar said there is a "gut sense" that democracy is the future
- Jaishankar said Ind didn't pay kind of attention to its social indicators & human resources in past
India should be practical about how it leverages the international environment and correct mistakes made in the past by paying more attention to hard security, said External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar on Wednesday while stressing on the need for capacity building.
"When we are looking at India at 75, it's not just India at 75, we are also looking another 25 years ahead," Jaishankar said at the Raisina Dialogue, an international gathering of leaders and policymakers in New Delhi.
"The idea that others define us, that you know somewhere we need to get approval from other quarters, I think, that's an era we need to put behind," he said.
"If I were to pick a single thing we have done, a difference that we have made to the world in the last 75 years, is a fact that we are a democracy," he added.
Jaishankar said there is a "gut sense" that democracy is the future and a large part of this is due to the choices made by India in the past.
"There was a time when in this part of the world, we were the only democracy. If democracy is global today or we see it global today, in some measure, the credit is due to India," he said.
Speaking on where India has fallen short, Jaishankar said India didn't pay the kind of attention to its social indicators and human resources in the past.
"Two, we didn't concentrate as much on manufacturing and technology trends as we should have. Three, in terms of foreign policy, we didn't give as much weight to hard security," he said.
The External Affairs Minister stressed that India should focus on capability building in the next 25 years. "What we should be doing in the future one, in the next 25 years, is about capability, capability and capability- in every possible domain and every possible way."
He said India should be "completely fixated on the outcomes" and be "utterly practical" about how it leverages the international environment.
On the Ukraine war, he said that the best way to deal with the conflict would be to focus on "stopping the fighting and getting the talking" to move forward.
India's position on the crisis is best placed to advance such an approach, the External Affairs Minister said in response to a question at an interactive session at the Raisina Dialogue, India's premier foreign policy and geo-economics conference.
Jaishankar on Tuesday countered criticism of India's position on Russia's actions in Ukraine, saying Western powers have been oblivious to the pressing challenges in Asia including last year's developments in Afghanistan.
"We spent a lot of time yesterday on Ukraine and I have tried to explain what our views are but also explained that in our minds the best way forward is to focus on stopping the fighting, getting them talking and finding ways of moving forward. We think our choices, our positions are best placed to advance that," he said.
India has not yet publicly condemned the Russian attack on Ukraine and has been calling for the resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.
(With ANI inputs)
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