'India is not sitting on the fence', says External Affairs Minister S.Jaishankar

minister jaishanka thank you very much uh day two of your trip to uh the cee um it's been quite a ride since february for not just the region not just europe not just the west but it is now and it is now trickling in terms of effect of what's happening between russia and ukraine into the rest of the world the east the global south um paint us a little bit of a picture of india and how india has been impacted you've come out of covid you've had issues on the border with china you've come out of the quad with many many diverse and divergent opinions and an economy that is looking uh to make dramatic changes but in very difficult and turbulent times so if you can paint us a picture of where india is at right now and then we will pick up the conversation from there okay uh let me go with exactly that flow uh i think yes we are largely out of the kovit though the you know it never quite goes away uh but we have out of the kovid also with uh with a strong sense of economic recovery uh i think uh there's a lot of optimism about rebuilding and not just rebuilding but actually leapfrogging in many areas particularly digital i think we handled it very prudently i almost i'm tempted to say smartly in terms of the financial responses which was we didn't blow the bank in responding we intervened where we had to and very effectively uh and the at the moment in a sense the uh the the modi government has just completed eight years in office and what we have done in those eight years is really to i would say build almost a i would say a social welfare society at a speed and a scale which the world hasn't seen and in some ways the coed has actually hissed that i mean uh we we are we are for example you know as an example we are giving uh food support to 800 million people and we've been doing this for more than two years so that's like the population of the us and eu put together we have a house ownership house publicly supported house ownership program which covers about 115 million beneficiaries which is almost like building houses for japan uh or even if you look at terms of you know this campaign uh this program actually to replace firewood with uh with uh gas cooking uh the it's it's impacted 80 million people that's like changing germany's kitchen uh in the space of a few years uh so there's a lot going on there and why i mentioned that is many of the global developments today have the uh have the potential of actually putting that under stress uh your second reference was to china yes we are going through a particularly difficult patch in our relationship with china we've had differences in the past but we've never had a situation where you know after 1962 where really agreements on not bringing forces to the border have been disregarded a very large number of forces have been brought to the border we've had a clash people have died and this has not happened now it happened two years ago and so in a sense i i it's a bit of a diversion but it's also useful reminder to europe that there were other things happening in the rest of the world which sometimes europe perhaps doesn't pay enough attention to and there's also been afghanistan and you know what what happened there the circumstances in which the western particularly american military forces left finally and now we have ukraine and you know coming into this region uh it's it's a region which i know well i have lived here in budapest and in prague and uh it's it's a region which has been very helpful to us uh when we wanted to get uh 20 000 students out of ukraine uh uh slovakia hungary uh poland uh romania even moldova uh but uh i i think it's also important for people in the region to realize the you know how this is playing out to the rest of the world that it is creating a huge fuel crisis a food crisis a fertilizer crisis yeah pushing inflation in low-income societies which don't have the margins really to to absorb that and so it can very quickly become political in many societies i think that brings up an interesting question that's come in from uh an online audience member um which is relevant to this um this point that you make about the rest of the world versus right here right now in europe or in the west how interested are the indian people in the war in ukraine is it a major concern is it a minor concern you've kind of alluded to the fact that it's affecting fuel it's affecting food but how interested is the populace itself i i think it's a major concern it's a major concern for two reasons look today our existence is very connected i mean everybody sees things on the television on their phones on the net so wherever you are and because bear in mind today india is a very uh is a very digital society even people at lower levels of income the one thing they do have is the connectivity so there is a lot of awareness i i don't think anybody i mean everybody is i mean to put it mildly disturbed at the conflict i mean they see the pictures they they see that happening but the other part of it is it has begun to impact people's daily lives that you know either it's it's impacting the petrol cost at the bank it is impacting your wheat cost in your shopping uh it will have you know impact for farmers to get along with sowing uh and and i think businesses of you know when it impacts business because it is impacting business in multiple ways i mean you know there's a container problem there's an insurance problem you don't get certain commodities or if you do the prices are up so it's disrupting life and it's again it's not a unique causal disruption i mean at the same time i think some of the lockdowns in china also having an economic impact so but when you disrupt the economy it shows up in employment so i think it does trouble people i mean i'm trouble people is a very uh very well it's a job of a government i understand it would trouble people i think it troubles people in the west as well when cost of living crisis starts hitting um at some point when you look at global supply chains this is a very different world in 2022 that we operate in versus say in 1991 pre-liberalization when india could afford to stand by non-alignment as it was defined then i think a lot of critics would ask you um the increase in your oil imports uh that have happened between 20 2021 and 2022. it's nine times higher as of this month um you have been questioned in terms of that increased oil import from russia 95 dollars a barrel from for russian oil 119 approximately for brent crude um is that profiteering is that looking out for your own interest what does that really mean for foreign policy in india and how do you tie non-alignment with nine times more oil imports out of russia how do you make the two meet well look uh first of all i don't honestly uh i don't see a non-alignment oil uh connection at all i mean today europe is buying oil europe is buying gas i just read the new lot of the new package of sanctions now the package is designed in a way in which consideration has been given to the welfare of the population so you know pipelines have a certain carve out so and timelines have been given it's not like tomorrow morning everything is going to be cut off so people need to understand if you can be considerate of yourself surely you can be considerate of other people so if a europe says uh look uh we have to manage it in a way in which its impact on my economy is not traumatic uh that that freedom or that choice should exist for other people as well now in terms of our oil purchases we don't send people out there saying go buy russian oil we send people out there saying go buy oil now you buy the best oil you can in the market so i i don't think i would attach a political messaging uh to that uh i would also how do you not conflate the two i mean it i know the indian russian relationship is strong but you also have issues with china how do you then sit back and define indian foreign policy at this point where the west seems to be quite vociferous in trying to curtail funding for the war in ukraine whereas by purchasing this oil for national interest um india is being asked are you funding this war so look uh i i mean i don't want to sound argumentative but then tell me buying russian gas is not funding the ball i mean why is it it's only indian money and oil coming to india which funds but it's not gas coming to europe which ones i mean look somewhere i mean let's let's be a little even-handed out here and even this you know look the whole narrative that it's gone up nine times i mean it's gone up nine times from a very low base and it was a very low base because at that time the markets were more open you know why why if if countries in europe and the west and the united states are so concerned why don't they allow iranian oil to come into the market why don't they allow venezuelan or oil to come into the market i mean they've squeezed every other source of oil we have and then say okay guys you must not go into the market and guess the best deal for your people i don't think that's a very fair approach so talk to us about the second aspect that you that indian foreign policy is being questioned at this point when it comes to wheat bans and food bans of exports um how does that then correlate because we're talking about the global south and the east that is being squeezed by russia's issues with allowing ukrainian grains to be exported but by india doing the same again aren't those weakest people in the world being subjected to the same kind of issues from india do you see that as supporting russia or is it a completely different element that we don't understand in the west that your perspective is different uh i think answer is b you don't understand in the west but uh it it isn't just the west okay i don't think people understand because they're not actually tracking the trade we have we have been exporting wheat okay typically we export about two to three million tons last year last financial year was a better year we exported about 7 million tons this year before the heat wave hit us very badly the expectation was that we would do substantial exports and we were open i mean in fact prime minister himself i had said on various occasions saying look we see that there's a food crisis in the world and we'd like to be of help but what we then saw was a kind of run on our wheat a large part of it done by international traders uh based out of singapore and uh i think to some degree maybe dubai uh and the result was actually the low income countries who many of whom were our traditional buyers like our neighbors bangladesh sri lanka nepal these are our traditional buyers okay interestingly the gulf buys regularly from us i heard dr ted ross in the earlier session talk about yemen yemen buys from us sudan buys from us okay now what we saw was the low income buyers were being squeezed out the wheat was going was actually being stocked for being traded so in a way our goodwill was being used for speculation so we had to do something to to stop that because it was also impacting us at home our prices were going up so i want to be very clear what we have done we have actually said look we're not going to give speculators and open access to the indian market so that the indian customer and the the ldc's of the world get the short end of that yeah what we are still open to doing uh is we are where we see a a kind of a deserving country uh wanting meat very glad to supply it within the realm of possibility and just for the record uh i think we've done this year wheat exports to about 23 countries the rate of export this year if i were to take the same period as uh last year my rough sense is it's about forex okay so so actually uh it's gone up and i i know in many cases you know foreign ministers of some countries have called me up and we have assured them that they would have access to a market so this is all about stopping and curtailing speculation at the end that's right and preventing a diversion to high income countries with a greater possibility to buy because what we saw happen with the wax seeds yeah you know we don't want to see happen with the wheat which was the rich people got vaccinated and the birds were left to gordon well that brings up a question again from the audience now and i would like to ask i will come to you i want to just do one question from um uh the online audience which kind of follows up on your point of diversions um uh this person's asking according to the wall street journal india is becoming a key point for a trans shipment of russian oil to bypass uh sanctions how does that serve india's foreign policy interests i don't know does whoever wrote that knows what transshipment means well i mean trans shipment is when you get it now when you get it and you sell it to somebody else i i've not even heard of uh anybody in india uh thinking along those lines so yes we do buy saying the wall street journal report is inaccurate that they're quoting uh politely yes okay so i can say it less politely but not a conduit to any russian oil transaction i mean listen please understand the oil markets there's an enormous shortage of oil there's a physical shortage of oil getting access to oil is difficult i mean a country like india would be crazy to get oil from somebody and sell it to somebody else i mean this is nonsense so that is your question answered and the minister's on the record yes please if you could stand up give us your name and a brief question constantine freelance journalist from vilnius lithuania um with the indian government essentially ignoring uh war crimes in ukraine not condemning russia not doing sanctions um you then expect i'm totally sorry i know what i do uh with uh the uh within the accounting on global support for uh in its struggle with china it's issues with china um how do you think you'll be trusted by others after that why do you think anyone will help delhi after you didn't help others over your crime thank you you know it's a interesting question which you might i mean not you meaning you personally but people might want to ask themselves because if i were to take europe collectively which has been singularly silent on many things which were happening for example in asia you could ask why would anybody in asia trust europe on anything at all uh so here's the take uh i i don't think uh i mean first of all i think you're mischaracterizing our position uh where we've where they have for example when buja happened we condemned butcher and we actually asked for an investigation into butcher in terms of what is happening with ukraine conflict our position is very clearly that we favor uh an immediate cessation of hostilities it's not that we've ignored it unless you call phone calls to putin and zielinski as ignoring something so first i would urge you to get the factual position accurately uh secondly in terms of the connection you are making look uh you know we we have a difficult relationship with china we're perfectly capable of managing it it's uh if if i get global understanding and support obviously it is of help to me but this idea that i do a transaction that i come in in one conflict because it will help me in conflict too that's not how the world works uh so a lot of our problems in china have nothing to do with ukraine have nothing to do with russia they predate it and there are i mean if we are getting into who is silent on what issue at what point of time i could point to a whole lot of issues on which as i said i mean europe has sort of held its space so i mean it's it's a great uh polemical point you made so i take it in that spirit i think uh as a follow-up to that a lot of uh the noises i've been hearing both in the united states and here in europe is on a similar train that you have a problem with china uh on the in the border on the border it's been going on for decades now it is getting worse uh what position does that leave you in when it comes to seeking support if further incursions are done further skirmishes happen at the border or within the border to kind of echo what's happening in ukraine in terms of sovereignty issues that are being raised um so i'm sorry do you mind if i encounter you please do but i want i want to come back to a question um the the crux of the question which i asked a few people in um uh in the political circles in the financial circles what's your big question and one of the foremost geopolitical strategists on wall street sent me this question for you and the question is simple if and when the choice comes down to it not today not tomorrow but in the future and she strongly believes it will for india will it become in terms of support the us or china and that will be kind of a defining moment that comes out of the situation that we face with russia right now look uh uh number one uh the you know why i wanted to uh interrupt you in a way i mean i'm i'm partly reacting to the previous observation you know somewhere europe has to grow out of the mindset that europe's problems are the world's problems but the world's problems are not europe's problems that it's if it is you it's yours it is me it's ours i think that's something and i see you know reflections of that uh again in terms of you know you there is a linkage today which is being made you know a linkage between china and india and what's happening in ukraine so come on guys i mean china and india happen way before anything happened in ukraine so the chinese don't need a president somewhere else in the world on how to you know engage us or not engage us or be difficult with us or not be difficult with us so i i said i mean i just see this as frankly a not very clever argument a very self-serving one and this idea that you know your grand strategy must be about how you will choose i will do what as all of us do i will weigh the situation you know like uh everybody after all what do you how do countries eventually make decisions there will always be two axis at this point i think it's an it's an understood accepted fact that you have the west u.s led you have china as the next uh potential access where does india fit into this but are you planning to not do this no i'm sorry that is exactly where i disagree with you this is this is the construct you are trying to impose on me and i don't accept it i mean i i don't feel i don't think it's necessary for me to join this axis or not and if i'm not joining this i must be with the other one i don't accept that i mean i think i i am i'm one-fifth of the world's population i am what today the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world uh i i mean forget the history civilization bit everybody knows that but i i think i'm entitled to have my own side i'm entitled to weigh my own interest make my own choices and my choices will will not be cynical and transactional but they will be a balance of my values and my interest there is no country in the world which disregards its interests so as a final question because i know you have to go and uh we our time has been cut short and the coffee break is coming and the coffee break is less important but your staff is insisting you have meetings as a final question then to leave us with this perspective as you say there's a whole part of the world that we are ignoring and the perspectives that we're ignoring what will or what is india's position on the world stage because if you want to talk about one-fifth of the world's population you cannot also sit on the fence when it comes to foreign policy matters non-alignment isn't plausible if you want to take your position on the world stage what does it look like with three years of your government left approximately um and what of this time of two years actually for two years thank you for the correction or even in the next decade or so what is india's position sitting on the fence is not an option to be a world leader i look i don't think we're sitting on the fence just because i don't agree with you uh doesn't make me sitting on the fence it means i'm sitting on my ground and my ground is actually you know if what are the big challenges of the world okay big challenges of the world are climate change i think i'm very critical to the solution i can be an exemplar i can be actually an arena for an enormous leapfrogging of green technologies look at terrorism look at the emergence of a world order look at security look at sustainable development goals i mean you take any and all of the big challenges of the world some part of the answer either comes out of india can be contributed to india and again i i hate to say you know come it's a bit like a broken record but look a lot of things are happening outside europe we have partly because of climate change for a lot of humanitarian natural disasters humanitarian responses in our part of the world today a lot of people look to us to help out the days when they expected europe to come which europe did at the 2004 tsunami the difference today is nobody's even thinking of that anymore so the world is changing new players are coming new capabilities are coming but a new agenda must come the world cannot be that eurocentric as it used to be in the past and who will india play with will it be europe and the us or will it be china and russia look they're not exclusive they're not exclusionary but we are a democracy we are a market economy we are a pluralistic society we have laws and contracts we have positions on international law so i think that should give you a fair part of the answer after all you began the question with reference to the quote i mean even though we didn't get much time to talk about it but the fact that you have uh uh today a grouping like the quad uh we just had its uh summit in tokyo where very important decisions were made on connectivity on telecommunications on supply chains on cyber security on in fact on maritime domain awareness it should tell you something which direction we're going so again i urge you that don't use necessarily a caricature version of one situation as a yardstick to pass a sweeping judgment because even on ukraine do do reflect on this point somewhere at some point surely the conflict has to end somebody will have to you know a set of people it cannot be a single country probably not we'll have to engage the players it is our collective interest to find some kind of resolution unless you're throwing up your hands and say this is not fixable so at that point i think people will need us says a diplomat a career diplomat turned politician then diplomacy and keep going with it thank you very much minister for joining us and thank you all for being part of this conversation [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: ThePrint

Views: 3,533,524

Keywords: ThePrint, shekhar gupta, theprint india, theprint hindi, theprint uncut, s jaishankar, ministry of external affairs, us china relations

Id: 2R1z5_KBHw4

Length: 27min 33sec (1653 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2022