Jaishankar’s “five big stories” in 2-month tenure.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: The Indian Ambassador to the US, S. Jaishankar, was in the Windy City, to give a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, during which he discussed India’s upcoming elections, the state of the country’s economy, and ties between the US and India as they currently stand, on Friday.
Jaishankar highlighted the projections that roughly 800 million of India’s 1.2 billion-large population would be turning out to the polls in what is said to be the largest democratic event in the history of mankind.
“For all its imperfections and frustrations, this Indian political system faces no question marks of either viability or legitimacy,” said Jaishankar. “On the contrary, voter turnouts have been as high as 70% and the results of polls have been accepted by all parties. For Americans, these Indian elections should represent a validation of their ideals and principles, that too under the most difficult of conditions.”
The Ambassador also talked about the importance of India’s youth in civic engagement, as well as the fact that although the urban areas of India account for one-third of its population, the rural sectors are becoming increasingly more important as they begin “getting more urbanized in their thinking.”
“The cumulative impact of these factors is of rising hopes and public impatience,” said Jaishankar. “That is the challenge that our politics will be addressing in the coming months. This tide of expectations will also help shape economic policies as much as they will foreign policy [because] all foreign policies have their roots in domestic politics.”
Moving onto India’s economy, Jaishankar did what many government officials from India have spent the last year doing, and urged those present not to fear for India’s economic future. He highlighted several key infrastructure projects within the country that had cleared more than $100 billion, as well as the importance of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in stabilizing the Indian economy and helping it achieve the growth rates it had only a few years ago.
Jaishankar also went into some detail regarding India’s GDP, rattling off statistics pertaining to the health of the Indian economy.
“GDP growth came down from 7.5% to 4.4% in Q1 of the current financial year – we follow the April – March cycle. It has improved to 4.9% in Q2 and we hope to reach about 5% at the end of the year,” he said. “Of course, world economic growth has broadly declined in this period but we do accept that there are issues that need to be addressed more effectively at home. Containing the fiscal deficit (at 4.6% of the GDP) and the current account deficit (at $ 45 billion) are among the key priorities. Exchange rates remained stable even in the face of QE tapering challenges, though they had slid the year before [and] exports are up by 6.3%.”
The Ambassador concluded by attempting to assuage any concerns that the relationship between the US and India has taken any permanent damage in recent months. In particular, Jaishankar noted “the five big stories of [his] limited two-month tenure,” which he listed as “the incident involving one of our diplomats in New York, the downgrading of India’s aviation safety status, attacks on our pharmaceutical industry, the US filing a WTO complaint on India’s solar industry and Congressional hearings on market access in India.”
Jaishankar said the perception that US-India ties have fallen off is essentially a construct of the media, and that behind closed doors, meetings and discussions are ongoing and the “tenor” of such interactions has been as good as ever.”
Ultimately, the Ambassador conceded that there is work to be done on several issues, but that ties between the countries remain productive, and urged parties in both countries to “get off public argumentation platforms where we find ourselves more often than is good for our ties.” Additionally, Jaishankar called on the Indian American community to become the main bridge between the two nations, singling them out as “an effective bridge” between the US and India.
“Indo-US ties need to be worked upon at different planes. There are pressing issues on the immediate agenda which require more give and take. But while doing so, we must not lose sight of the larger connect that provides an enabling environment where more ambitious visions could unfold. That is certainly my operational plan and I would like to believe that people here are equally positive,” he said.