iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Sunday that the success of India’s foreign policy is a manifestation of its domestic policy. He also underlined that today India is the world’s fastest growing economy and the world wants to open operations and ventures in the country.
Jaishankar was speaking at an event ‘Bharat’s Rise in Global Diplomacy’ in Benares Club in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, May 26.
Addressing the event, Jaishankar said, “If we look at the major economies, our growth rate of 7 per cent is the highest in the world. Today the world is interested in India, so many joint venture proposals come here, so many companies want to start their operations, and our trade, and exports are rising. We all should accept that there has been a lot of progress in this…the growth rate has increased and inflation has reduced.”
On India’s foreign policy, he said that India lacked confidence in the past, but has displayed a “confident” foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership.
He added that while earlier India was reluctant to have relations with countries, today it is working to keep everyone close.
“You must have sometimes heard the Prime Minister also say what was the difference between the foreign policy of earlier times and today’s foreign policy…Earlier, we wanted to maintain relations with other countries, but we lacked confidence…we felt to keep everyone at some distance. Keeping distance and balancing distance,” he said.
He added, “After 2014, you can see a very different foreign policy. The confidence increases, when a very confident leader comes, who has an understanding of the world, who has faith in the country. You see that the same foreign policy, you keep everyone together, keep them so close. So now the balance is not about keeping distance, the balance is how close we keep everyone, and how many relationships we build together.”
Jaishankar said today India maintains healthy relations with several major powers of competing interests, ranging from the US and Russia, to Iran and Israel and it is part of organisations like the SCO and BRICS.
“Today, we can say that we have good relations with America, not just good, but the best relations since independence…we are good with Russia, we have maintained relations with Israel as well. The relationship with Iran is also good. We have a big connectivity proposal to build a corridor through Saudi Arabia and also a corridor through Iran and Russia…We are also a member of SCO with Russia and other countries. We have just seen the extension of BRICS,” Jaishankar said.
“So you must understand that today India’s position, India’s reputation, India’s image in the world is different and India’s situation is also different. So for us, whatever success of foreign policy happens is a manifestation of domestic policy…So the first thing I said is that there is tension in the world, there is conflict in the world, there is war in the world, there is instability in the world, but India’s position is very strong in this,” he added.
