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External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar spoke about the various strategies that India needs to balance to emerge as a leading power in the world. He also touched upon the need for supply chain reformulations, moving over from the hangovers of past and changing priorities of India in the last decade.
The External Affairs Minister delivered the remarks during the launch event of 'India's World' magazine in the national capital on Sunday. Speaking about the aspiration of India becoming 'Viksit Bharat', Jaishankar said, "If today our aspiration at home is to become a Viksit Bharat, surely there must be a foreign policy for Viksit Bharat... Because Viksit Bharat means India's rise." He noted that there is a need for India to start thinking of moving towards being a leading power and we should focus on how to be more ambitious, how to plan ahead and position ourselves. A country will move ahead if it has, in a sense, "some mixture of offence, of defence, of hedging, of prudence". This, he said would include that India join and rebalance groupings, participate in "re-globalization", take advantage of interdependence, accelerate multipolarity and utilise the impact of technology. Explaining the key issues which a multigenerational foreign policy of India will look at, he said that the issues are "a mix of the old and new". "The issues that we have historically confronted, many of them have not gone away. We have yet to secure our borders. We are still combating terrorism on a very serious scale, so there are the hangovers of the past". He noted that today we have moved to a foreign policy which is much more directly tasked to advance national development. He highlighted that in the last 10 years much greater stress has been on economic diplomacy. "Technology, capital, best practices, collaborations, investments, these actually occupy a much larger space in terms of what we do with other countries", EAM said. He also spoke of the relevance of the digital era and the role of the manufacturing industry in foreign policy. "The digital era calls for a foreign policy requirement of its own because the digital era is fundamentally different from the manufacturing era. The kind of hedging that could be done in manufacturing, at the end of the day, products were products, whereas something digital is not just a product anymore, it's a data emitter. Today, we have to build our global partnerships into our economics," Jaishankar said. In his speech, he said that another issue which is of a very high priority is the supply chain reformulations. He said, "The rerouting of supply chains today has both a foreign policy implication, but it also is a great national development opportunity". He noted that the idea of more resilient, reliable supply chains, can spur manufacturing in the country, and act as a catalyst for technology growth in India. Speaking about the importance of connectivity, EAM noted the various connectivity projects India is associated with such as the India Middle East Economic Corridor, International North-South Transport Corridor and the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway. In his concluding remarks, Jaishankar said that the changing world brings forth new ideas and initiatives such as the QUAD, IMEC, I2U2 and the International Solar Alliance. Jaishankar also highlighted India's growing responsibilities in geopolitics and the idea of India as a first responder in time of need. "Today, India is a country of whom there are greater expectations, a country which has greater responsibilities. The idea of India as a first responder will get more frequent. In the expanded neighbourhood region would be an expectation that India be part of an international response whenever wanted. Because the world is changing, there will be new ideas and initiatives" he said. "I think we have to do very much more with the world. I think it's for the good of this country that our own progress and development will accelerate with a deeper engagement with the world. So my, my sense for a foreign policy ahead would really be to think big, to think long, but to think smart", he concluded. (ANI)
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