TOI CORRESPONDENT FROM LONDON: The world is becoming increasingly multipolar with different centres of power as a result of the Trump administration’s policies, which suits New Delhi very well, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said at Chatham House here.
“If I were to look at the big priorities of this president, many of them work for us,” he said. “He seems to be committed to keeping energy prices reasonably affordable and stable — we welcome that. He is putting a lot of emphasis on tech and on the use of tech as a game changer in global politics. That offers a lot of possibilities for us. When I look at our interests and our expectations of the relationship, there is a lot of promise. We see a president and an administration moving towards multipolarity and that is something which suits India,” he said.
“Just because there is multipolarity, it doesn’t have to translate into currency multipolarity,” he explained. “There is no policy on our part to replace the dollar,” he stressed. “The dollar, as the reserve currency, is the source of international economic stability and we want more economic stability, not less. The assumption that, somehow, there is a united BRICS position against the dollar is not borne out by facts,” he said. “We have no interest in undermining the dollar. On the contrary, a lot of problems in our region are due to the lack of availability of the dollar,” he said.
“Since 1945, one tends to think and talk about the USA as ‘USA and the Western world’ so it’s more like a bloc rather than a nation. What is quite clear is that the US’s own self-perception is now more as a nation; and perhaps a little less as a bloc.” India has spent the past decade developing relations with big players, and non-big ones, he said. “If we can do that successfully with all major powers and groupings, that puts you in a much better position in a world which we could see was heading towards multipolarity,” he said, adding that both India and the Global South would benefit from this new world.
Jaishankar also defended India’s human rights record from foreign press criticism. “We have been, for political reasons, at the receiving end of a lot of expressions and sometimes even campaigns on human rights. We listen to it. We are not perfect, but I would argue if one looks around the world, we have a very strong human rights record.
“As a credible democracy where people have growing faith in that democracy, where representation has broadened in every conceivable way, where the state has been very fair in terms of treatment of its citizens, I think any sweeping concern on human rights is misplaced.”
He also batted back against a question from Bronwen Maddox, chief executive of Chatham House, referring to British media and “parts of UK govt” claiming that minorities such as Tamils, Sikhs and Muslims do not feel as comfortable in India. “I am a Tamil and I feel perfectly comfortable,” he said.
“There is a certain politics prevalent in some parts of the world, very driven by a kind of vote bank consideration, driven by creating identity lobbies, actually pandering to them and stoking a certain attitude, and we don’t think that is a very healthy politics,” he said.
“That kind of tokenism is very disruptive politics and so I would dispute the idea that that is an ideal to which we should all aspire. That is a model which we reject. Good politics is about treating your citizens equally,” he added.