Author: Seema Sirohi @seemasirohi
Publication: Thread Reader App
Date: October 11, 2019
URL:      https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1179058333413707784.html

Think tank tour of @DrSJaishankar extremely important. Here are some points made by him at the @AtlanticCouncil this morning. How India relates to the West: Two centuries of humiliation. A recent study shows that $45 trillion taken out of India by the British over 200 years.

.@DrSJaishankar: India made choices in 1947. Took what were western values and made them universal. If you believe democracy is an ethically superior model, it was because India sustained it.

.@DrSJaishankar: Last 70 years the west was supportive of India's rise in education, devt. etc but conservative when it came to security and defence issues. The west didn't want India to be either too weak or too strong. Stirred the porridge just right.

.@DrSJaishankar: West came to India's help after the 1962 war but didn't support India in 1971. Within the span of a decade, two different responses. Internal US thinking laid out by Eisenhower wanted to keep India in play-a weak India was a problem but a strong India equally so.

.@DrSJaishankar: How do you create convergences? We are coming from a different place, different history. While power of the west remains strong, underwrites the international system. But a strategic and cultural rebalancing underway since 2008 financial crisis.

.@DrSJaishankar: Two propositions: The west needs India for its market, human resources, burden sharing. India needs the west for its growth. Every major growth story happened cos of the west - Japan, Korea, ASEAN and China. Question: Is a new compact beta west & India possible?

.@DrSJaishankar: If the rebalancing is to be reflected, first there should be a realisation that it's happening and then new methods of working must be found. Requires different conversations, different collaborations.

.@DrSJaishankar India wd hedge enough to have a bargaining hand. To the extent India has diff. equities doesn’t detract from working together. She have understanding of a changed India. Democratisation has had its own impact – pol, social aspects. Old elite is out of business.

.@DrSJaishankar: New set of people, own sense of roots, who relate to the world differently. How to do you build bridges, role of diaspora is imp. Treatment of diaspora abroad becomes a factor in our relations with other countries. @AtlanticCouncil

.@DrSJaishankar: India was not at the high table in 1947. How do you make world order more contemporaneous? UN Sec Council membership is one. As India rises – what kind of power will India be? One part of answer lies with the west. @AtlanticCouncil