Dr S Jaishankar on changing world, changing India

It was a pleasure to listen to Dr S Jaishankar, the newly appointed Minister for External Affairs of India, at The Growth Net Summit. I took some notes and soundbites:

Changes in the world

1. Globalisation is under stress – especially in the following areas:
   1. Supply Chain
   2. Mobility of Talent
   3. Market Access
2. Growth of nationalism, validated electorally in many places, with two types:
   1. Nationalism of confidence
   2. Nationalism of insecurity
3. Global rebalancing: Rise of China is the sharpest manifestation of that, shifting the relative weight of the global economy

The three changes above are interrelated, and as a result, navigating the world is much more complex than before.

• The world is as it is – we might argue we like it or not;
• If you have multiple power centres, you do not engage some and reject/ignore the rest.

Changes in India:

Just look at the election results.

• The government has kept alive and strengthens the expectation of change in this country;
• Majority of people in this country think India’s standing in the world has gone up;
• Contrary to many experts might believe, people care about how the world views India;
• A lot of Indian economies is external – therefore making it important to negotiate fair trade condiments;
• Silos are not a government problem, but a problem with any big organisation;
• We came up short in many areas, e.g. our African projects, we do not have the right tools to conceptualise these projects;
• We award projects to companies who have to find partners afterwards – that leads to suboptimal results. We need to examine who their partners and what their capabilities are before awarding the projects

Being optimistic 

• My Job: manage the risks & maximise the opportunity
• The landscape will become even more complicated – but disruption of global supply chain creates opportunities;
• India is a US$3 trillion economy, we want to move to 5 trillion economies in the next few years.
• Last time this shift happened was in China: we should look at the opportunities that came out of China during those years but also look at what tools/technologies that were not available then but can be used now.