New Delhi: India sees France as a resident power in the Indo-Pacific, indispensable to its peace and stability, and a premier partner for New Delhi in the region, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said Friday.
Addressing the ‘Ambition India 2021’ conference being held at the French Senate in Paris via video conferencing, Jaishankar said the India-France partnership must help safeguard interests, protect the commons and uphold international law and multilateralism.
But, it must also offer better alternatives to countries in the region and enable them to make sovereign and viable choices, he said.
The multiple crises facing the world are riding on the deeper global structural changes that have been sharpened by the pandemic, he said.
“It has stripped us of the comfort of the familiar, tested existing relationships, exerted stress on global institutions and is reshaping international order,” Jaishankar said.
Asserting that in these times, values, trust and transparency matter, he said these traits define the India-France relations.
“We are also bound by our shared belief in strategic autonomy and a multipolar world, underpinned by reformed and effective multilateralism. That has produced decades of solidarity, most recently during the pandemic, and a relationship free from sudden shifts and surprises,” he said.
The India-France strategic partnership has become even more relevant in the 21st century both to strengthen multilateralism, which must be the basis of a stable multipolar world, and even more for the future of the Indo-Pacific region, Jaishankar said.
“India is at the strategic centre of this region; France its two bookends with a vast EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone). India sees France as a resident power in the Indo-Pacific region, indispensable to its peace and stability, and a premier partner for India in the region,” he said.
The India-France partnership in trade, investment, connectivity, health and sustainability will matter as much as our cooperation in defence and security, Jaishankar said.
India is an exciting, rapidly growing, stable, rule-based, market-driven and democratic frontier of economic opportunities, located at the very heart of the dynamic Indo-Pacific region, he noted.
“Just last week, we crossed the milestone of a billion doses of vaccinations. This historic milestone was based on a combination of domestic development and manufacture and licenced production, an extraordinary digital platform, exceptional delivery system and public acceptance,” he said.
For a country that had no PPE unit when the pandemic broke, India is now the second largest manufacturer in the world, the minister said.
“Where we had one RT-PCR testing lab then, we can now do millions of tests in a day,” he added.
“All stakeholders have contributed to the scale and speed of this enterprise. But, what makes it possible is the radically transformed nature of public-private partnership, industry-science collaboration and the ease of doing business in India,” Jaishankar asserted.
Indeed, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi led efforts to address the immediate challenges of an unprecedented pandemic, he also sustained the process of bold reforms to boost recovery, accelerate growth and make the Indian economy more resilient and self-reliant, without turning our back on fair trade, he said.
Noting that France has been a key economic partner for India, Jaishankar said its top businesses have had a long presence across every sector of our economy, from luxury to defence, agriculture to manufacturing, infrastructure to technology and services.
“Many lead their industries and export sophisticated products out of India. Post pandemic, I see an increased sense of confidence and interest, motivated, in part, by the same concerns that are driving our policies,” he said.
There are three areas of critical importance to our collective future — health, climate and digital, he said.
France and India are blessed with complementarity of resources, skills and scale and political will, he asserted.
Noting that the EU brings enormous weight behind this equation, Jaishankar said his year’s EU27 plus India Summit, hosted by Portugal, signalled India and the EU’s intention to take their partnership to a new level.
As part of this vision, India has made bold offers for agreements on trade and investment, he said.
Asserting that France has led the EU in building a strategy for the Indo-Pacific region, Jaishankar said, “We look to France to put this high on thw European Commission’s agenda, so that a new framework will bring together over 1.8 billion people, and some of the largest economies, joined by democracy and trust in the shared pursuit of prosperity and shaping a new order.”
France and India are fortunate to have the best of both — political trust and economic opportunities, he said.
“We must seize this window of opportunity. To promote flow of investment and business in both directions. That is how it must be,” Jaishankar said.
PTI