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
- Globalisation is under stress – especially in the following areas:
- Supply Chain
- Mobility of Talent
- Market Access
- Growth of nationalism, validated electorally in many places, with two types:
- Nationalism of confidence
- Nationalism of insecurity
- 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.