题为 “变化的世界，变化的印度” 的讲座

ENGLISH VERSION

Dr. S Jaishankar on changing world, changing India by Jianggan Li

It was a pleasure to listen to Dr. S Jaishankar, the newly appointed Minister for External Affairs of India, at the 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 relative weight of 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 strengthened 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 economy is external – therefore making it important to negotiate fair trade conditions;

• 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 opportunities

•   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 a $5 trillion economy 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.

This article comes from The Low Down (TLD),  a discussion club by the team at MomentumWorks.