Tag: Jaishankar

‘Old, rich and dangerous…’ Jaishankar takes on George Soros

[ad_1]
Sydney: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday termed billionaire investor George Soros as an “old, rich opinionated person” who still thinks that his views should determine how the entire world works.
Addressing a session with Australian Minister Chris Brown at the Raisina@Sydney Dialogue , Jaishankar said,”Mr Soros is an old, rich opinionated person sitting in New York who still thinks that his views should determine how the entire world works…such people actually invest resources in shaping narratives.”
“People like him think an election is good if the person they want to see, wins and if the election throws up a different outcome then they will say it is a flawed democracy and the beauty is that all this is done under the pretence of advocacy of open society,” the external affairs minister said.
Soros had in his remarks at the Munich Security Conference this Thursday said, “Adani is accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards. Modi is silent on the subject, but he will have to answer questions from foreign investors and in Parliament.”
Terming Modi and Adani as “close allies,” whose “fate is intertwined”, the 92-year-old billionaire investor said, “This will significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government and open the door to push for much-needed institutional reforms.” “I may be naive, but I expect a democratic revival in India,” Soros said in his remarks delivered at the 2023 Munich Security Conference.
In Sydney, Jaishankar today said, “When I look at my own democracy, I’ve today a voter turnout, which is unprecedented, electoral outcomes which are decisive, electoral process which is not questioned. We’re not one of those countries where after elections, somebody goes to arbitrate in court.”
“Mr Soros said India is a democratic country but he doesn’t think the Prime minister of India is a democrat. He earlier accused us of planning to strip millions Muslims of their citizenship which of course didn’t happen, it was a ridiculous suggestion,” the external affairs minister said.
Globalisation, Jaishankar said, allows seamless opportunities but also allows narratives to be shaped, money to come in, and organisations to get about their agenda.

“All this is done under the pretence of advocacy of open society of transparency, etc,” he said.
Hitting out at Soros’ comments, Jaishankar said, “If you do this kind of scaremongering…millions of people will be deprived of citizenship. It actually does real damage to the societal fabric because somebody out there believes you. You create that kind of fear psychosis.”
Meanwhile, BJP lashed out over Soros’ comments. Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Union Minister of Women and Child Development Smriti Irani on Friday slammed Soros said that the man who broke the Bank of England and a man, who is designated as an economic war criminal, has now expressed his desire to break the Indian democracy.
She added that Soros wants a government that is pliable to his needs for making his nefarious plans successful.
“It is evident from his statements that he has pronounced funding over one billion dollars to target leaders like PM Modi. This is significant,” The Minister said during the conference.
She said, “Those who support Soros need to know that democracy has prevailed in India and continues to do so and as a party worker of the BJP, I can say that these designs to weaken Indian democracy will be met by the might of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
[ad_2]
#rich #dangerous #Jaishankar #takes #George #Soros
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 18, 2023
India to record highest number of cashless transactions in world: Jaishankar at Raisina@Sydney

[ad_1]
Sydney: India is moving ahead to record the largest number of cashless transactions in the world, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday at the Raisina @ Sydney Business Breakfast.
“If you look at our cashless transactions, the UPI, I think we record the largest number of cashless transactions in the world. So there’s been a kind of a technology leapfrogging in the psyche of people, and that’s been actually a very big difference,” Jaishankar said at the Raisina@Sydney Business Breakfast.
Raisina@Sydney Business Breakfast was organized jointly by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and India’s Observer Research Foundation (ORF) at the InterContinental Hotel in Sydney.
“The digital was ensuring the integrity of delivery and transaction that would not have been possible equally on the financial side because we encouraged people to open bank accounts, sometimes bank accounts with no money.
But we were, again, during the same period, put money into the bank accounts of 415,000,000 people who are the lowest income in the country. And if you ask me, how did you get through COVID, I cannot overstate the importance of financially supporting people and feeding people and ensuring that this works on the ground,” he said.
Jaishankar also stated that digital governance has now become the basic mechanism today to do socioeconomic delivery.
“India is trying to demonstrate that the country can construct a social, comprehensive social welfare system, even at the scale of income. And the scale of income is USD 2,000 per capita,” he said.
Talking about the social programs, Jaishankar said that in the last four years, India has been able to cover about 500 million people in health schemes, about the same number covered by pension schemes.
“There was a program to replace firewood with cooking gas. And the cooking gas, the initial lot of cooking gas, you get free of cost. Now, that program was as big as 80 million people.

We have a housing program, a housing program. We have already delivered 30 million houses, and at five people, a family in India, which means 150,000,000 people have been covered,” Jaishankar said.
“So I’m giving you these numbers because it actually tells you the scale which digital backbone makes possible.We couldn’t have done this ten years ago because we didn’t have that backbone, and we didn’t have the strategic understanding to activate and utilize that backbone. And you can see this in the lifestyle of people as well today,” he added.
He also said that Australia will get really deployable 5G technology from India this year and which is something that will be of great global interest. “Today you can see the change in infrastructure in India. The transformation has happened because of an integrated infrastructure policy,” he added.
Raisina@Sydney Conference, which began today with ‘Business Breakfast’, will involve ministerial and high-level government representations as well as participation from industry and civil society.
This mega event will also include panel and keynote addresses by leading regional think tanks on issues ranging from geopolitics to technology and economics.
After the keynote address of Jaishankar, a panel session will be held that would cover topics like “Next steps in the Australia-India economic partnership: stability, security and sovereignty,” and it will be addressed by keynote speakers: Vivek Lall, Chief Executive, General Atomics Global Corporation; Jodi McKay, National Chair, Australia-India Business Council; Vikram Singh, Vice President, and Country Head – ANZ, Tata Consultancy Services and facilitated by Bec Shrimpton, Director, The Sydney Dialogue, Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
[ad_2]
#India #record #highest #number #cashless #transactions #world #Jaishankar #RaisinaSydney
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 18, 2023
EAM Jaishankar speaks to British foreign secretary Cleverly

[ad_1]
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday spoke to his British counterpart James Cleverly focusing on various aspects of bilateral ties and India’s G-20 presidency.
The phone conversation came ahead of the British foreign secretary’s likely visit to India to attend a meeting of the G-20 foreign ministers on March 1 and 2.
“Received a call from UK Foreign Secretary @JamesCleverly. Reviewed our bilateral relationship and discussed the agenda of India’s G20 Presidency,” Jaishankar tweeted.
It was the first phone conversation between Jaishankar and Foreign Secretary Cleverly after a controversy broke out over a two-part BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots.
India dismissed the documentary as a “propaganda piece” saying it is designed to push a particular “discredited narrative”.
It is understood that the implementation of a 10-year roadmap between India and the UK to bolster the ties in diverse areas figured in the phone conversation.
However, it is not known whether Jaishankar and Cleverly touched upon the proposed free trade agreement between the two sides.
The India-UK relationship was elevated to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership during the India-UK virtual summit held between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his then British counterpart Boris Johnson in May, 2021.

At the summit, the two sides adopted a 10-year roadmap to expand ties in the key areas of trade and economy, defence and security, climate change and people-to-people connections among others.
The two sides have been engaged in negotiations for a free trade agreement as well.
Prime Minister Modi and his British counterpart Rishi Sunak held talks in Bali in November on the sidelines of the G-20 summit.
[ad_2]
#EAM #Jaishankar #speaks #British #foreign #secretary #Cleverly
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 7, 2023
Lord Krishna, Hanuman greatest diplomats of world: EAM Jaishankar

[ad_1]
Pune: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said Lord Krishna and Lord Hanuman were the greatest diplomats of the world.
He was speaking on Saturday while interacting with the audience in Maharashtra’s Pune city in a question-answer session during the launch of ‘Bharat Marg’, the Marathi translation of his book ‘The India Way’.
Jaishankar said, “Lord Shri Krishna and Lord Hanuman were the greatest diplomats of the world. I am saying this very seriously.”
If one looks at them in the perspective of diplomacy, what situation they were in, what mission was given to them, how they had handled the situation, he said.
“Hanumanji, he had gone ahead of the mission, he had contacted Goddess Sita, burnt Lanka…he was a multi-purpose diplomat,” Jaishankar said.
The minister said for the world’s 10 big strategic concepts pertaining to international relations in today’s discourse, he could give an equivalent for every concept from the epic Mahabharat.
“If you say today it is a multi-polar world, at that time what was happening in Kurukshetra (the site of the battle of Mahabharat), that was multi-polar Bharat, where there were different rajya (kingdoms), they were told ‘you are with them, you are with me’…a couple of them were non-aligned…like Balram and Rukma.”
He said now people say it is a globalised world, there is interdependence, there is constraint.

“What was Arjuna’s dilemma, it was constraint, that he was emotionally interdependent…that how do I fight against my relatives. That was not material interdependence, but it was emotional interdependence,” he said.
“We sometimes say Pakistan did this or that, and we will show strategic patience. The best example of strategic patience is the way Lord Krishna handled Shishupal. He (Lord Krishna) forgave him 100 times,” he said.
[ad_2]
#Lord #Krishna #Hanuman #greatest #diplomats #world #EAM #Jaishankar
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 29, 2023
Jaishankar hails Vajpayee’s handling of diplomatic situation post 1998 nuclear tests

[ad_1]
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday lauded then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s handling of the diplomatic situation following the nuclear tests in 1998 and said that within a space of two years India had engaged all the major countries of the world.
Presiding over the third Atal Bihari Vajpayee memorial lecture that was delivered by former Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan here, Jaishankar also hailed Vajpayee’s stint as an external affairs minister, and his role in strengthening India’s ties with the US and Russia.
The external affairs minister said the fundamentals of mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest that are talked about now in terms of the modus vivendi with China, a lot of it is credited to Vajpayee.
Asserting that Vajpayee was never “impervious” to the challenges of terrorism, Jaishankar hailed his realism in using all instruments at his command to actually try to forge a basis of relationships in this region which would very explicitly abjure terrorism.
Talking about the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests, the external affairs minister urged people not to look just at the tests but also look at the diplomacy that followed them.
“Within a space of two years after the tests, we had engaged all the major countries of the world, had actually brought them around. When you had the visit of a president (Bill) Clinton, PM (John) Howard, PM (Yoshiro) Mori, visit of president (Jacques) Chirac. It was actually the post-test diplomacy, which I think anybody who is in the field of diplomacy, should look at and seek to draw lessons,” he said.
“I was at that time posted in Japan and it was a relationship that was particularly affected by the nuclear tests. But we always drew from the prime minister’s confidence that we would find a way of settling it down and indeed today when I look at that relationship, I marvel at the wisdom and the maturity with which prime minister Vajpayee got all of us to look at that particular challenge,” Jaishankar said.
India conducted five nuclear tests of advanced weapon designs in May, 1998 at the Pokhran range in Rajasthan.

Jaishankar said Vajpayee also transformed the relationship with the US in the post Cold War environment. He said Vajpayee also imparted continuity and stability into our ties with Russia.
Vajpayee served as prime minister thrice — first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months from 1998 to 1999 and then for a full term between 1999 and 2004.
The lecture was delivered by Kausikan, former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore. Kausikan is currently serving as chairman of the Middle East Institute at National University of Singapore.
[ad_2]
#Jaishankar #hails #Vajpayees #handling #diplomatic #situation #post #nuclear #tests
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 23, 2023