Indian diplomat said India should work on its relationship with China, Pakistan
Foreign Secretary of India Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Tuesday said that instead of “demonizing” President Donald Trump we should “analyze” him. Jaishankar was speaking at the Gateway House’s Geo-economic Dialogue in Mumbai.
“A US that looks at the world differently and tries to create new terms of engagement might actually offers us opportunities which a more orthodox America might have been timid about,” Jaishankar said.
Indian policy making in the current uncertain global environment would include “some damage control, some risk mitigation” as well as some opportunities, he added.
Referring to issues surrounded outsourcing, he said that outsourcing helped United States to become more competitive; and it would present India with elbow room to do business with the new administration.
Jaishankar said that President Trump represented a thought process and it was not a whim or a monetary expression. He said that Trump’s actions would probably focus on companies who exploited tax loopholes and Indian companies had less to worry about because they were on the right side of both tax compliance and jobs.
The foreign secretary underscored the growing global concern over Pakistan.
“The thinking on Pakistan is necessarily security centric because the fact is we can live in a situation of very little threat but not in a situation of terrorism on and off, which will be the case as long as the factory keeps running,” he said. “Terrorism in the past was seen as our problem but now it’s a bigger problem. There is today international concern.”
Jaishankar continued: “Western countries may not be open about Pakistan and terrorism problem but they have concerns. The issue really here is whether Pakistan is willing to take fundamental steps. They need to shut down terrorism factory.”