There is a savage irony to the fact that the horror in Mumbai began with terrorists docking near the Gateway of India. The magnificent arch, built in 1911 to welcome the King-Emperor, has ever since stood as a symbol of the openness of the city. Crowds flock around it, made up of foreign tourists and local yokels; touts hawk their wares; boats bob in the waters, offering cruises out to the open sea. The teeming throngs around it daily reflect India’s diversity, with Parsi gentlemen out for their evening constitutionals, Muslim women in burqas taking the sea air, Goan Catholic waiters enjoying a break from their duties at the stately Taj Mahal Hotel, Hindus from every corner of the country chatting in a multitude of tongues. Three years ago today, ringed by police barricades, the Gateway of India – the gateway not just of India but to India, and to India’s soul – was barred, mute testimony to that criminal assault on this country’s pluralist democracy.

The terrorists who heaved their bags laden with weapons up the steps of the wharf to begin their assault on the Taj, like their cohorts at a dozen other locations around the city, knew exactly what they were doing. Theirs was an attack on India’s financial nerve-centre and commercial capital, a city emblematic of the country’s energetic thrust into the 21st century. They struck at symbols of the prosperity that was making the Indian model so attractive to the globalizing world – luxury hotels, a swish café, an apartment house favoured by foreigners. The terrorists also sought to polarize Indian society by claiming to be acting to redress the grievances, real and imagined, of India’s Muslims. And by singling out Britons, Americans and Israelis for special attention, they demonstrated that their brand of Islamist fanaticism is anchored less in the absolutism of pure faith than in the geopolitics of hate. Terrorists’ are not respecters of faith: dozens of Mualims were amongst the 166 people who perished on 26/11 three years ago.

The attack on Nariman House and the killing of its residents was particularly sad, since India is justifiably proud of the fact that it is the only country in the world with a Jewish disapora going back 2500 years where there has never been a single instance of anti-Semitism. This is the first time that it has been unsafe to be Jewish in India – just as it is the first time it has been unsafe to be dining in a 5-star hotel, to be buying a train ticket, or to be chatting at a café: the banality of evil destroying the tranquillity of ordinary life.

The terrorists hit multiple targets in Mumbai, both literally and figuratively. They caused death and destruction to Indians with near-impunity, searing India’s psyche, showing up the limitations of its security apparatus and humiliating its authorities. They dented the worldwide image of India as an emerging economic giant, a success story of the era of globalization and an increasing magnet for investors and tourists. Instead the world was made to see an insecure and vulnerable India, a “soft state” bedevilled by enemies who could strike it at will.

Today, as happened three years ago, the platitudes will flow like blood. Terrorism is unacceptable; the terrorists are cowards; the world stands united in unreserved condemnation of this atrocity. Commentators in America tripped over themselves to pronounce this night and day of carnage India’s 9/11. But India has endured many attempted 9/11s, notably a ferocious assault on its national Parliament in December 2001 that nearly led to all-out war against the assailants’ presumed sponsors, Pakistan. The year of 26/11 alone, 2008, was one in which terrorist bombs had already taken lives in Jaipur, in Ahmedabad, in Delhi and (in an eerie dress-rehearsal for the effectiveness of synchronicity) several different places on one searing day in the state of Assam. Mumbai combined all the elements of its precursors: by attacking it, the terrorists hit India’s economy, its tourism, and its internationalism, and they took advantage of the city’s openness to the world. A grand slam.

Indians have learned to endure the unspeakable horrors of terrorist violence ever since malign men in Pakistan concluded it was cheaper and more effective to bleed India to death than to attempt to defeat it in conventional war. Attack after attack has been proven to have been financed, equipped and guided from across the border, the most recent before 26/11 being the suicide-bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, an action publicly traced by American intelligence to elements in Islamabad’s dreaded military special-ops agency, the ISI. In its meticulous planning, sophisticated co-ordination and military precision, as well as its choice of targets, the assault on Mumbai bore no trace of what its promoters tried to suggest it was — a spontaneous eruption by angry young Indian Muslims. This horror was not homegrown.

The Islamist extremism nurtured by a succession of military rulers of Pakistan has now come to haunt its well-intentioned but lamentably weak elected civilian government. The bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel and various military installations in Pakistan since have proved that Frankenstein’s monster is now well and truly out of that government’s control. The militancy once sponsored by its predecessors now threatens to abort Pakistan’s sputtering democracy and seeks to engulf India in its flames. There has never been a stronger case for firm and united action by the governments of both India and Pakistan to cauterize the cancer in their midst. This is why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh persists in his determined pursuit of peace.

Today we live in hope that the latest peace initiative between India and Pakistan will take wings and end the narrative of death and despair that has bedevilled our relationship. Three years ago it became conclusively clear that India had become the theatre of action for a global battle, one which threatens Indian lives, it is true, but one whose world-wide objectives also mean that we are not alone in this fight. Indeed, Pakistan should be on the same side as us in what for them is an existential struggle. That is also part of the solidarity we are all expressing this morning.

Holding this event in Mumbai today is a fitting reminder that India has recovered from the physical assaults against it. It is a land of great resilience that has learned, over arduous millennia, to cope with tragedy. Bombs and bullets alone cannot destroy India, because Indians will pick their way through the rubble and carry on as they have done throughout history.

But what can destroy India is a change in the spirit of its people, away from the pluralism and co-existence that has been our greatest strength. The Prime Minister’s call for calm and restraint in the face of this murderous rampage was vital. His efforts to build peace on the ashes of this horror are courageous. If these tragic events lead to the demonization of any group in India, if they permanently end our hopes of peaceful co-existence on the subcontinent, the terrorists will have won. For India to be India, its gateway – to the multiple Indias within, and the heaving seas without — must always remain open. That is the spirit of Mumbai. May it always endure.

We bowed our heads in mourning. Today, let us raise them again in hope.

Jai Hind.

I’d like to start by commending the MEA for holding an international seminar on this hitherto neglected subject. I believe the turnout so early on Friday morning augurs well for the discussions to follow.

I once asked a distinguished senior diplomat what lay behind all the hostility I heard expressed towards the Government of India in a particular foreign country: were we not getting our message across, didn’t our critics understand what we were doing — was it ignorance or was it apathy? He replied: “I don’t know, and I don’t care”. Which rather explains the Indian Government’s public diplomacy problem.

And yet we know that none of the Government’s goals can be met without the support of ordinary people around the world – the informed publics who sustain the political will of their governments. This is what makes public diplomacy necessary.

So what is public diplomacy? Our first challenge is definitional. I know that many communications experts in the West draw a distinction amongst the terms public diplomacy, public affairs and public relations. The US is the country where these three terms first came into official use. Simply put, from a US Government point of view, public diplomacy seeks to engage, inform and influence foreign publics in order to promote sympathy and goodwill for the US and for American policies; public affairs seeks to encourage domestic public understanding and support of US Government policies and activities; and public relations seeks to win the support of a target audience, domestic or foreign, for the work or objectives of a specific US organization or project. Though the Government of India does not use the term “public affairs” at all, rarely admits to “public relations” in its own dealings, and has only started speaking of “public diplomacy” quite recently, the fact is that the Government engages in public diplomacy, public affairs and public relations all at the same time, every day.

It is the responsibility of any Government to seek to gain the support of people around the world, by reaching out to the public at large through the media, non-governmental organizations, and other institutions of civil society as well as, where feasible, directly to the public. While the Wikileaks scandal has demonstrated anew the importance of private diplomacy – the transmission of confidential communications between governments — public diplomacy consists of what Governments want the public to know and are prepared to say publicly. Ultimately both public diplomacy and the more conventional kind have the same ultimate objective, which is to promote a country’s national interests, including the well-being and security of the people in whose name the Government concerned is acting.

Public diplomacy, of course, is neither as old as Grotius, nor as new as 9/11, though both have shaped its practice. Some of you may know that the term was coined at my Alma Mater, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, in 1965, and it was during my time at Fletcher a decade later, in the mid-seventies, that I first came to study the subject at the Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy.

Un-named, and then named, public diplomacy was a keystone of US Cold War foreign policy from the 1950s into the 1980s — when Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Marti, WorldNet TV and USIA were treated as important elements of Washington’s strategic foreign policy mix. But before we hold the US up as an exemplar of how to get public diplomacy right, it’s also important to recall that with the success of the Solidarity Movement in Poland, and the collapse first of the Berlin Wall and then of the Soviet bloc, US Government interest in public diplomacy slumped, and this was inevitably followed by a reduction in resources — and even the abolition of USIA. It was only in the aftermath of 9/11 and the ongoing battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world, that we again witnessed a sudden renewal of interest in public diplomacy in the US. India may have been slower to wake up to the potential of public diplomacy, but this conference is an encouraging indication of a new willingness in this country to seek to “influence public attitudes to the formation and execution of foreign policy” – to use the Fletcher School’s definition.

So public diplomacy is the framework of activities by which a government seeks to influence public attitudes with a view to ensuring that they become supportive of foreign policy and national interests. It differs from traditional diplomacy in that public diplomacy goes beyond governments and engages primarily with the general public. In India, at least the way the MEA uses the term, “public diplomacy” embraces both external and domestic publics, that is what Americans would call “public diplomacy” and “public affairs”. I think this is fine, since it is clear that in today’s world you cannot meaningfully confine your public diplomacy to foreign publics alone; in the current media environment, whatever message any Government puts out is also instantly available to its domestic audience on the Internet.

Public diplomacy is not just about communicating your point of view or putting out propaganda. It is also about listening. It rests on the recognition that the public is entitled to be informed about what a government is doing in international affairs, and is also entitled to responsiveness from those in authority to their concerns on foreign policy. Successful public diplomacy involves an active engagement with the public in a manner that builds, over a period of time, a relationship of trust and credibility. Effective public diplomacy is sometimes overtly conducted by governments but sometimes seemingly without direct government involvement, presenting, for instance, many differing views of private individuals and organizations in addition to official Government positions.

Public diplomacy should also recognize that in our information-saturated world of today, the public also has access to information and insights from a wide and rapidly growing array of sources. This means that government information must be packaged and presented attractively and issued in a timely fashion if it is to stand up against competing streams of information, including from critics and rivals of the government. Your public diplomacy is no longer conducted in a vacuum; you are also up against the public diplomacy of other countries, sometimes on the very same issues.

This is all the more so in the era of the Internet. How does information reach people, particularly young people, today? In recent years, the emergence of Web 2.0 tools and social media sites like Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr – to name just a few of the more popular ones — offer governments a new possibility not only to disseminate information efficiently through these channels but also to receive feedback and respond to concerns. Countries like the US, UK and Canada consider Web 2.0 a boon for their public diplomacy and have been quick to embrace and deploy a wide array of internet tools. They also pro-actively encourage their diplomats to blog, so that they can populate the discussion forums with sympathetic points of view. In doing so, they are acutely aware of the effectiveness with which terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and many other militant organizations have harnessed the full power of Web 2.0 tools to propagate their message.

I believe the MEA has begun to do well to rise to this challenge. The MEA is on Twitter and Facebook, though the extent to which transparency is encouraged remains quite limited. But the very fact that the Public Diplomacy Division has gone beyond seminars in Delhi, and the production of coffee table books, documentaries, and the India Perspectives magazine, is welcome. In my brief stint as Minister I used to argue that foreign policy is too important to be left to the MEA alone. The nation needs an informed and engaged citizenry to face up to the responsibilities of being a global player in the 21st century. This is why I applauded the valuable nationwide lecture series conducted by the Public Diplomacy Division. Even better is the Government’s willingness, however tentative this may be, to start using Web 2.0 tools. A lively and candid presence on the Internet will have the impact of a force multiplier in terms of the efficacy of our outreach efforts, far in excess of the current reach of the relatively anodyne press releases and statements the Government puts out every day.

But there is a long way to go, and it would be idle to pretend there isn’t resistance, both from traditionalists and on grounds of security risks. But we can be encouraged, perhaps, by the fact that the practice is spreading, and that governmental organizations ranging from the Indian Post Office and the Delhi Police to the Pune city council, have started to make full use of the possibilities offered by the new social media tools. They are receiving a positive response to such initiatives.

There is no good reason why an IT powerhouse like India should not be in the forefront of public diplomacy efforts using 21st century technologies and communications practices. Not to deploy social media tools effectively is to abdicate a channel of contact not only with the millions of young Indians who use Facebook, Twitter and Orkut, but also to the huge Indian diaspora that tends to have such an active presence on the net on Indian issues and in turn wields a disproportionate influence on international perceptions of India. To place matters in perspective, Facebook alone currently has close to 500 million subscribers and a unique ability to disseminate information virally among its system and beyond through its networks of friends, fans and those who share their information. When President Obama delivered his famous Africa address in Ghana, the State Department deployed a full range of digital tools and some 250,000 Africans posed questions or made comments on the address – and most received responses from dedicated staff assigned to respond!

So much for what public diplomacy is, why it is needed and how it can be deployed. The one issue that remains, though, is the substance of the message. A bad decision or a weak policy can rarely be salvaged by good public diplomacy alone. “Incredible India” is a great campaign for the Department of Tourism, but in public diplomacy what you need is Credible India. There is a need for a positive and forward-looking strategy that projects a vision of India in the world, that helps define and shape what is increasingly being called Brand India. That’s where soft power comes in, and I look forward to addressing that issue in the first panel that will follow this introductory session. So I shall hold my thoughts on that for now, and hand the floor to the distinguished speakers alongside me this morning – none more distinguished than our Foreign Secretary, Ambassador Nirupama Rao.

It is a privilege, to deliver this lecture in honour of one of the great historians of our times, Baron Asa Briggs, former Chancellor of Britain’s Open University Like me but at a far more distinguished level, Lord Briggs has, over the years, combined an interest in history with a fondness for literature and a deep involvement with the media. The idea that the media is a vital agent and catalyst for social change has never been better expounded than by Asa Briggs, and my only regret is that that was not the subject that the organizers of today’s events wished me to address! Instead, I will attempt, as requested, to do justice to the broader themes of your conference this week, focusing on the challenges of education and literacy, social justice, community development, skills development and formal education in relation to open learning. I am far from an expert on any of these themes, but hope to offer you an outsider’s perspective on them.

Of all the many paradoxes with which India abounds, the saddest must be that we are a country where nearly half the population is illiterate but which has produced the world’s second largest pool of trained scientists and engineers. A country which invents more sophisticated software for U.S. computer manufacturers than any other country in the world, and yet in which there are at least 35 million children who have not seen the inside of a school.

For those who care about illiteracy, India is the largest country in a subcontinent that gives great cause for concern. South Asia has emerged as the poorest, the most illiterate, the most malnourished, and the least gender-sensitive region in the world, with over half the world’s illiterate adults and 40 per cent of the world’s out-of-school children. South Asia has by now the lowest adult literacy rate (49 per cent) in the world. It has fallen behind Sub-Saharan Africa (at 57 per cent), even though in 1970 South Asia was ahead. Thirty-seven per cent of all Indian primary school children drop out before reaching the 5th grade. We have a shortage of schools and a shortage of teachers, and the problem gets worse every year because of population growth. Our subcontinent has the worst teacher-pupil ratio in the world. The illiterate population of India exceeds the total combined population of the North American continent and Japan. The work of basic education has never been more needed.

India has made only uneven progress in educating its population. Whereas most districts in Kerala, following the introduction of free and compulsory education by an elected Communist government in 1957, have attained 100 per cent literacy, the national literacy level still hovers around the halfway mark; the current figure is 62 per cent. Kerala has a literacy rate of nearly 100 per cent while Bihar is only at 44 per cent. And Bihar has a female literacy rate of only 29 per cent.

The traditional explanation for the failure to attain mass education is two-pronged: the lack of resources to cope with the dramatic growth in population (we would need to build a new school every day for the next 10 years just to educate the children already born) and the tendency of families to take their children out of school early to serve as breadwinners or at least as help at home or on the farm. Thus, though universal primary education is available in theory, fewer than half of India’s children between the ages of six and 14 attend school at all.

But official national policy has undoubtedly long been in favour of promoting basic education. As a child at school I remember being exhorted to impart the alphabet to our servants under the Gandhian “each one teach one” programme, and many of us were brought up on Swami Vivekananda’s writings about the importance of education for the poor as the key to their uplift. But it is true that, 63 years after independence, progress has been inexcusably slow. Obviously, there were policy choices being made here. For our first six decades, India spent less than 4% of its GNP on education, only this year have we finally raised the level to 6%, to put money behind the new education reforms, in particular the Right to Education Bill. Successive governments before this have collectively spent only one-tenth of the amounts on education that they have committed to defence.

What is missing is not just financial resources, but a commitment on the part of our society as a whole to tackle the educational tasks that lie ahead. Indian politicians are all too quick to take refuge in sharp rejoinders about not drawing the wrong conclusions from the illiteracy figures. Education, some argue even today, is not always relevant to the real lives of village Indians, for India’s illiterates are still smart, and illiteracy is not a reflection of their intelligence or shrewdness (which they demonstrate, of course, by voting for the very politicians who make such arguments). Fair enough, but Kerala’s literate villagers are smart too.

That commitment is at last coming. There is a sea change in official attitudes to education, exemplified in the series of educational reforms being piloted through the current Parliament. These days there is even ambitious talk of turning India into a “knowledge society”. The transformation of India into a knowledge society will depend on our capacity to provide and sustain knowledgeable citizens and workers. Currently the need for education at all levels, including continuing education, which is essential for upgrading skills and for equipping our people to face the challenges of the workplace, are largely unmet. For example, fewer than 20 per cent of Indians reach high school, and less than 10 per cent graduate. In the case of higher education, only about 50 million out of India’s population of 1.1 billion people have degrees beyond high school. Ironically, India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world, with over 350 universities and 16,000 colleges which produce more than 2.5 million graduates on an average every year. The problem is that, according to many corporate leaders, a majority of these graduates are unemployable without extensive retraining, and outside a few ivory towers of excellence, the system is failing to provide the knowhow that our society needs in its citizens and workers.

Now there has been good news. The adult literacy rate has more than tripled since 1951, from 18 per cent in 1951 to 62-66 today. (But one must be wary of these figures. UNESCO defines an illiterate person as one who cannot, with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life. By that definition I suspect fewer than half our population would really qualify as literate.) The increase is even more dramatic for female literacy, from nine per cent to 43 percent in 2001. The gender gaps have been closing as female literacy increased much faster than male literacy.

The task of providing elementary education to all children is massive. India is making a major effort now to expand primary education. Our primary school system has become one of the largest in the world, with 150 million children enrolled. On a typical day, roughly 290 million students are attending classes somewhere in India. But it’s not enough.

We hear more and more from progressive economists about the importance of what they call “human capital”. Human capital is defined as the stock of useful, valuable, and relevant knowledge built up in the process of education and training. Literacy is the key to building human capital and human capital is the vital ingredient in building a nation. There is no industrial society today with an adult literacy rate of less than 80 per cent. No illiterate society has ever become an industrial tiger of any stripe.

A key strategy for creating sufficient and appropriate human capital is to focus on basic education for all children. As Gabriela Mistral has so poignantly said, “We are guilty of many crimes, but our worst sin is abandoning the child; neglecting the foundation of life. Many of the things we need can wait; The child cannot. We cannot answer Tomorrow. Her name is Today.”

What is striking from the international experience is that whenever and wherever basic education was spread, the social and economic benefits have been quite striking and visible. The development strategies followed in recent decades by Japan, the East Asian industrialising tigers, and China laid a firm basis for equitable growth by massive investment in basic education for all. Literacy was fundamental not only to accelerating the economic growth of these countries, but to distributing resources more equitably and thereby to empowering more people.

It is a truism today that economic success everywhere is based on educational success. And literacy is the basic building block of education. It is not just an end in itself: literacy leads to many social benefits, including improvements in standards of hygiene, reduction in infant and child mortality rates, decline in population growth rates, increase in labour productivity, rise in civic consciousness, greater political empowerment and democratisation – and even an improved sense of national unity, as people become more aware than before of the country they belong to and the opportunities beyond their immediate horizons.

Education is also a basic component of social cohesion and national identity. The foundations for a conscious and active citizenship are often laid in school. Literacy plays a key role in the building of democracy; my home state of Kerala, where we find ourselves today, provides a striking example of how higher levels of literacy lead to a more aware and informed public. Adult literacy in Kerala is nearly 100 per cent, compared to the Indian average of 66 per cent. As a result, nearly half of the adult popu1ation in Kerala reads a daily newspaper, compared to less than 20 per cent elsewhere in India. One out of every four rural labourers reads a newspaper regularly compared to less than two per cent of agricultural workers in the rest of the country. So literacy leads directly to an improvement in the depth and quality of public opinion, as well as to more active participation of the poor in the democratic process.

This means that education plays an important role in the attainment of social justice. Educational institutions are expected to equip students to the best of their capabilities to secure a meaningful place in society. Education is also the great leveller, fostering a process of developing an egalitarian society. But when a large number of people are excluded from the educational system, they cannot participate meaningfully in the economic, social and cultural life of their communities. Educational reforms are thus required to address the needs of children who are particularly vulnerable to marginalisation and exclusion. Access to education is a fundamental social need.

Access to education has to move beyond merely securing admissions in various courses and programmes leading to degree certificates and diplomas. The ultimate purpose of education must be the creation of awareness regarding livelihood, basic health, legal rights including human rights, and participation in all spheres of a democratic society – which places emphasis on inclusive growth and development.

The Indian constitution in its preamble advances the idea of social justice and equality of status and opportunity to all, and Article 14 establishes that the State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or equal protection of the law. Article 15 prohibits any kind of discrimination on grounds of caste, creed, sex, birth, etc. Nevertheless, access to several parameters of social justice is denied to many because of constraints emanating from discrimination, oppression, racism, classism, sexism, stereotyping and prejudice against certain sections of the society, a problem India shares with many developing countries. Access to education or the lack thereof, is another significant constraint in the pursuit of social justice.

Amartya Sen, the polymath Nobel laureate in Economics, has reminded us that “The elimination of ignorance, of illiteracy and of needless inequalities in opportunities [are] objectives that are valued for their own sake. They expand our freedom to lead the lives we have reason to value.” In his most famous poem, the other Nobel Prize-winning Bengali, the immortal poet Rabindranath Tagore, implicitly spoke of education as fundamental to his dream for India.

Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high;
where knowledge is free;
where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
where words reach out from the depth of truth;
where timeless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sands of dead habit;
where the mind is led forward by Thee
into ever-widening thought and action,
into that heaven of Freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

So it was in a place “where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; where knowledge is free” and “where the mind is led forward … into ever-widening thought and action” that Tagore hoped his India would awake to freedom. Such a mind is, of course, one that can only be developed and shaped by education.

But more prosaically, illiteracy must be fought for practical reasons. How are we going to cope with the 21st century, the information age, if half our population cannot sign their name or read a newspaper, let alone use a computer keyboard or surf the Net? Tomorrow’s is the Information Age: the world will be able to tell the rich from the poor not by GNP figures, but by their Internet connections. Illiteracy and poor levels of educational attainment are self-imposed handicaps in a race we have no choice but to run.

India’s significant progress in developing information and communications technologies (ICT) can also be a major asset here. The use of ICT in expanding educational opportunities, particularly in supporting open learning, should not be underestimated. With improved broadband connectivity, ICT can allow a single teacher to reach a dozen classrooms in far-flung and remote areas of the country. ICT will also permit a focus on the role that open education resources play in enhancing the quality and reach of education.

India is never going to be a great 21st century power if it doesn’t educate its young – all of them, not just the ones who can afford an education. And what I say of India is true of every other developing country represented in this room today.

Absorbing new technologies, raising productivity levels, improving the competitiveness and quality of exports – all hallmarks of development in the 21st century – all depend on the skills of a country’s workforce. In the countries of East Asia – the so-called “tiger economies” – labour productivity has been rising approximately by 10 per cent a year, and at least half of this can be attributed to investments made in education and technical skills.

There is an increasing need in India for skilled manpower across all sectors of the economy. With India’s increasing economic might, the big and growing gap between the demand for and supply of skilled people is widely felt. A study by the Observer Research Foundation concludes that by 2022 India will need to meet the target of “skilling and up-skilling” 500 million people. The target cannot be met by the Government of India alone or by conventional educational institutions. It has to be a combined effort by public and private institutions, embracing different government ministries, development partners, NGOs, private and faith-based providers, local community groups, educational institutions and the corporate sector. It will need new vocational training institutions that are yet to be established, as well as recourse to two important assets of the Indira Gandhi National Open University – community colleges and distance learning.

But we must start early, with India’s young children. It is true that while the government recognises the needs, it has neither the resources nor the ability to deliver quality education to all of India’s children. Education is a state subject in our federal constitution, so its quality varies widely, from Kerala’s record in putting all children through school, to Bihar’s female literacy rate of 29%. Our state governments have not been able to enroll all children between the ages of five and ten in school, nor are they able to retain the ones they enroll – some drop out because their families can’t afford to keep them in school when they could be out to work in the fields or weaving rugs or making footballs, some because the teaching is so abysmal that they don’t learn anything at school anyway. Ensuring that students achieve decent learning outcomes and acquire values and skills that enable them to play a positive role in their societies is a remote prospect. One ignores at one’s peril the role of education in nurturing the creative and emotional growth of learners and helping them to acquire values and attitudes for responsible citizenship.

As I stated earlier, more Indian kids have never seen the inside of a school than those of any other country in the world. And those who have may not see a teacher, since we hold the world record for teacher absenteeism, or be given the books and learning materials without which the educational experience is incomplete.

Let us spare a thought for the poor teacher – in India teachers are too often underpaid, under-appreciated and therefore under-motivated. No wonder we have a nationwide shortage of 25 lakh (2.5 million) teachers, and several of those who do exist on the rolls, especially in our village pathshalas, don’t actually teach: they show up once a month to collect their government salary and are AWOL the rest of the time. Teachers are, or should be, the biggest influence on their impressionable charges, at least after the parents. Their impact on young lives is profound and long lasting. They shape the character, curiosity level and intellectual potential of their students In other words, they help shape our society. So far, under-valued and in many cases under-qualified, they are doing an uneven job.

How on earth can we maintain our much-vaunted economic growth rates if we don’t produce enough educated Indians to claim the jobs that a 21st century economy offers? We rely on a handful of excellent private and missionary schools, a large number of uneven (but mostly hopeless) government schools, millions of kids with no schooling at all – and the efforts of a number, not large enough, of charitable organisations.

Of course, distance learning can be an important tool for ensuring access to quality education. The Somali Distance Education for Literacy Programme for example, teaches literacy, numeracy and life skills through weekly radio programmes, print materials and face to face instruction. In a country without a functioning government and an ongoing civil war, it has over 10, 000 registered learners, with at least 70 per cent of them women and girls in about 350 classes. Similarly, the Open School Society in India reaches out to over 100,000 learners, many of who are dropouts, children from the underprivileged castes and learners with disabilities. The programme also has the advantage of being able to provide equivalence with the formal educational system while remaining culturally and linguistically relevant to local needs. And for people with disabilities, especially those in remote rural areas, there is no substitute for distance learning.

India’s National Sample Survey shows that the non-availability of schooling facilities in India accounts for about 10 per cent of the “never enrolled” in rural India and about eight per cent in urban India. The difference between the sexes is larger in the urban areas. A large number of people, both in rural and in urban India, particularly women, cannot avail of the educational services because of their participation in household economic activities and other socio-economic reasons. In all such cases, the importance of distance learning cannot be overstated.

Education also plays a vital part in community development, broadly be defined as a set of values and practices which permits a community to overcome poverty and disadvantage, knitting the society together at the grassroots and deepening democracy. Education is one of the most essential aspects of developed community. Throughout time, universities have played an important social role through the creation, preservation and the extension of knowledge to and within communities. Universities cannot afford to remain as oases of excellence when the communities sustaining them are silently turning into deserts.

The linkage between universities and communities is vital. There is a need for universities to reach out to communities, and make their policies and structures more flexible and relevant to community development. Community based learning enriches coursework by encouraging students to apply the knowledge and analytical tools gained in the classroom to the pressing issues that affect local communities. A useful example of the advantages of community based learning is soil fertility, management (SFM) in Western Kenya. Farmers and researchers used community based learning approaches and jointly developed an approach built on farmers’ folk ecology and outsiders’ knowledge, while going beyond methods that were merely curriculum-driven. Similarly, the “Learning for Farming” Programme in several Commonwealth countries has been advantageous in linking farmers to the information that can help them improve their livelihoods.

Community radio can be another beneficial tool for community based learning. It can play an essential role in giving young people the skills that can lead to better livelihoods and help them seek employment or self employment. It can also raise awareness on health, which is also a developmental challenge in several developing countries. Community radio can provide non-formal educational opportunities, especially for communities that are not fully literate. Radio dramas, storytelling and interviews in particular, are effective and low cost ways of making community voices an integral part of the learning process. In addressing the challenge of learning for development, open and distance learning can play a particularly important role, building a bridge between knowledge acquisition and skills development and the potential to reduce the inequalities of access that blight conventional education m most countries.

But since I have mentioned gender difference, it is also essential to focus on that specific aspect of the educational challenge in our country today. The saddest aspect of India’s literacy statistics is the disproportionate percentage of women who remain illiterate. Sixty per cent of India’s illiterates are women. Female literacy (43 per cent) was 26 percentage points below the male literacy (69 percent). No society has ever liberated itself economically, politically, or socially without a sound base of educated women.

One of the more difficult questions I used to find myself being asked when I was a United Nations official, especially when I have been addressing a generalist audience, is: “what is the single most important thing that can be done to improve the world?” It’s the kind of question that tends to bring out the bureaucrat in the most direct of communicators, as one feels obliged to explain how complex are the challenges confronting humanity; how no one task alone can be singled out over other goals; how the struggle for peace, the fight against poverty, the battle to eradicate disease, must all be waged side-by-side – and so mind-numbingly on. But of late I have cast my caution to the winds and ventured an answer to this most impossible of questions. If I had to pick the one thing we must do above all else, I now offer a two-word mantra: “educate girls”.

It really is that simple. There is no action proven to do more for the human race than the education of the female child. Scholarly studies and research projects have established what common sense might already have told us: that if you educate a boy, you educate a person, but if you educate a girl, you educate a family and benefit an entire community.

The evidence is striking. Increased schooling of mothers has a measurable impact on the health of their children, on the future schooling of the child, and on the child’s adult productivity. The children of educated mothers consistently out-perform children with educated fathers and illiterate mothers. Given that they spend most of their time with their mothers, this is hardly surprising.

A girl who has had more than six years of education is better equipped to seek and use medical and health care advice, to immunize her children, to be aware of sanitary practices from boiling water to the importance of washing hands. A World Bank project in Africa established that the children of women with just five years of school had a 40% better survival rate than the children of women who had less than five years in class. A Yale University study showed that the heights and weights for newborn children of women with a basic education were consistently higher than those of babies born to uneducated women. A UNESCO study demonstrated that giving women just a primary school education decreases child mortality by 5-10%.

The health advantages of education extend beyond childbirth. The dreaded disease AIDS spreads twice as fast, a Zambian study shows, among uneducated girls than amongst those who have been to school. Educated girls marry later, and are less susceptible to abuse by older men. And educated women tend to have fewer children, space them more wisely and so look after them better; women with seven years’ education, according to one study, had two or three fewer children than women with no schooling. The World Bank, with the mathematical precision for which they are so famous, has estimated that for every four years of education, fertility is reduced by about one birth per mother.

The more girls go to secondary school, the Bank adds, the higher the country’s per capita income growth. And when girls work in the fields, as so many have to do across the developing world, their schooling translates directly to increased agricultural productivity. The marvellous thing about women is that they like to learn from other women, so the success of educated women is usually quickly emulated by their uneducated sisters. And women spend increased income on their families, which men do not necessarily do (rural toddy shops in India, after all, thrive on the self-indulgent spending habits of men). In many studies, the education of girls has been shown to lead to more productive farming and in turn to a decline in malnutrition Educate a girl, and you benefit a community: QED.

As my former UN colleague Catherine Bertini once put it: “If someone told you that, with just 12 years of investment of about $1 billion a year, you could, across the developing world, increase economic growth, decrease infant mortality, increase agricultural yields, improve maternal health, improve children’s health and nutrition, increase the numbers of children – girls and boys – in school, slow down population growth, increase the number of men and women who can read and write, decrease the spread of AIDS, add new people to the work force and be able to improve their wages without pushing others out of the work force – what would you say? Such a deal! What is it? How can I sign up?”

Sadly, the world is not yet rushing to “sign up” to the challenge of educating girls, who lag consistently behind boys in access to education throughout the developing world. And yet girls lag consistently behind boys in access to education throughout India, with the honourable exception of Kerala. Indeed, we have a long way to go: we boast one State, Bihar, which even enthroned an illiterate woman as Chief Minister – as if to showcase its abysmal figure of a 27 per cent female literacy rate, one of the worst on the planet. But her seven daughters did indeed receive an education – so perhaps, after all, there are grounds for hope.

Certainly, there is no better answer. The former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan put it simply: “No other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, lower infant and maternal mortality, improve nutrition, promote health, including the prevention of HIV/AIDS, and increase the chances of education for the next generation. Let us invest in women and girls.”

Let us indeed do that. And let us educate boys too. We need to achieve 100 per cent literacy across the world, if we are to fulfil the aspirations we have all begun to dare to articulate, and rise to the development challenges of the 21st century.

Thank you and Jai Hind!

Name of Source: Commonwealth of Learning

Aayu Bovan, Vanakkam, Namaskaram, Good evening!
At one level it might seem a little odd for me to be addressing you all at the inauguration of the International Indian Film Awards. After all, I am a writer, and as a writer my attitude to our popular Hindi cinema can best be summed up in the tale of the two goats at a garbage dump outside a Bollywood studio, who are chewing away at discarded cans of celluloid. The first goat, chewing slowly, says, “you know, this film’s not bad.” The second goat, also chewing the celluloid, replies, “yeah, but the book was better.”

So I believe the book is always better. That’s why I even wrote a novel about the film world twenty years ago, called “Show Business”. But in fact I’m here because I’ve realized that Hindi cinema is perhaps India’s most successful brand ambassador internationally. Bollywood is bringing its brand of entertainment not just to the Indian diaspora in the US or UK but around the globe, to the screens of Sri Lankans, Syrians and Senegalese. During my years at the United Nations, I lost count of the number of African leaders who told me of their memories of growing up in little towns and villages looking forward to the arrival of a Hindi movie in the big city. A Senegalese friend told me of his illiterate mother who takes a bus to Dakar every month to watch a Hindi film – she doesn’t understand the Hindi dialogue and, since she’s illiterate, she can’t read the French subtitles, but these films are made to be understood despite such handicaps; she can still catch their spirit and understand the stories, and people like her look at India with stars in their eyes as a result. There’s an Omani in this audience here tonight who owns all the movie theaters in Muscat and shows mainly Bollywood movies. When I asked him, “oh, you have lots of Indians there, hanh?” he replied, “no, my audiences are 80% Arab”. An Indian diplomat friend in Damascus a few years ago told me that the only publicly-displayed portraits in that city that were as big as those of then-President Hafez al-Assad were those of Amitabh Bachchan. And here in Colombo, I was discussing politics with a senior Sri Lankan, talking about whether his kids knew both the Sinhala and Tamil languages, and he replied: “thanks to your movies, they’re speaking Hindi!”

So our films are part of India’s soft power in the world, and today they are reaching ever-wider international audiences: during the last year three of them, including Kites last week, opened in the US amongst the top ten grossing films of the week. Indeed, it’s Bollywood that has helped India demonstrate that is a player in globalization, not merely a subject of it.

And while our films are primarily about entertainment, their themes enshrine the values of diversity and pluralism that embody the best of what India is. Our cinema industry embodies the very idea of India’s diversity in the way in which it is organized, staffed, and financed and in the stories it tells. People of different backgrounds and upbringing are shown to be brothers; good and bad are always shown as being found in every community. These are the values which India stands for. And our popular films offer all of us in India a common world to which to escape, allowing us to dream with our eyes open.

Today we celebrate Indian cinema in Sri Lanka, a country just recovering from the ravages of civil war. The end of the conflict with the LTTE has presented Sri Lanka with an opportunity to heal the wounds created by decades of protracted conflict, to make a new beginning and to build a better future for all its people. It has also opened up greater options for India and Sri Lanka to cooperate and enlarge our areas of engagement.

We all know that there are some in India who would rather have preferred that we were not here. The condition of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka is both an emotional and a political issue in our country. But India has never shirked from making known its legitimate concerns, and our engagement on this issue has been received in a very constructive spirit by the Government of Sri Lanka.

India had strongly supported the right of the Government to act against terrorist forces. At the same time, India has emphasized the importance of focusing on issues of relief, rehabilitation, resettlement and reconciliation, and the Indian people are proud that our Government is working actively in assisting in these “four Rs” in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka. A fifth “r” – the redevelopment of the war-affected areas – is the next priority.

Though I speak in a purely personal capacity, I am confident that India will continue to remain engaged with the task of helping people to resume their lives which had so cruelly been interrupted by conflict. And we would all want to see a political consensus here to give the Tamil people of Sri Lanka an honoured place in their own country, within the framework of a united Sri Lanka, consistent with democracy, pluralism and respect for human rights. We wish Sri Lanka well in its efforts to accomplish this.

Today, World Environment Day, is an occasion for celebration. India and Sri Lanka need to look to the future, to a future in which our geographical proximity becomes a reason for closeness rather than controversy, where the past reminds us not of recent pain but of ancient commonalities, where religion and culture bring us together in a celebration of our common heritage. Lord Rama came to Lanka to reclaim Sita and left; Ashoka’s envoys brought Buddhism to Lanka and stayed. These ancient links unify us in spirit, in the spirit of the timeless tides that wash our shores and that have tied us together for millennia. It is now the film world’s turn to build a new bridge to Lanka, a Rama Setu of the imagination.

I wish IIFA and all of you a memorable evening.

It is indeed a privilege to be addressing you on the subject of “Why Foreign Policy Matters”, and particularly to do so at a time when are celebrating the 62nd anniversary of our Independence. At that midnight hour when, in Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s memorable words, India awoke to life and freedom, our country was deeply conscious of its international obligations. In his historic speech about India’s “tryst with destiny”, Nehruji, speaking of his country’s dreams, said: “Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.” These words are typical of that great nationalist that a time when the fires of Partition were blazing across the land, he thought not only of India, but of the world. In recalling that spirit 62 years later, I am pleased to see so many internationalist-minded young Indians here today.

In those six decades, the world has become even more closely knit together than Nehruji foresaw. Indeed, today I think it is fair to say that even those countries that once felt insulated from external dangers — by wealth or strength or distance — now fully realize that the safety of people everywhere depends not only on local security forces, but also on guarding against terrorism; warding off the global spread of pollution, of diseases, of illegal drugs and of weapons of mass destruction; and on promoting human rights, democracy and development.

Jobs everywhere , too, depend not only on local firms and factories, but on faraway markets for products and services, on licenses and access from foreign governments, on an international environment that allows the free movement of goods, services, and persons, and on international institutions that ensure stability – in short, on the international system that sustains our globalized world.

Today, whether you are a resident of Delhi or Dili, Durban or Darwin, Aligarh or Alabama – whether you are from Noida or New York– it is simply not realistic to think only in terms of your own country. Global forces press in from every conceivable direction. People, goods and ideas cross borders and cover vast distances with ever greater frequency, speed and ease. We are increasingly connected through travel, trade, the Internet; what we watch, what we eat and even the games we play.

These benign forces are matched by more malign ones that are equally global. When I was only a few years older than most of you, I began my United Nations career dealing with people without passports, refugees caught in the conflict in Vietnam and Cambodia. In my later career, I learned that these people personified what the United Nations was increasingly called upon to deal with, “problems without passports” — problems that cross all frontiers uninvited, problems of terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of the degradation of our common environment, of contagious disease and chronic starvation, of human rights and human wrongs, of mass illiteracy and massive displacement. Such problems also require solutions that cross all frontiers, since no one country or group of countries can solve them alone.

Let us not forget that 9/11 made clear the old cliché about our global village – for it showed that a fire that starts in a remote thatched hut or dusty tent in one corner of that village can melt the steel girders of the tallest skyscrapers at the other end of our global village.

In such a world, issues that once seemed very far away are very much in your backyard. What happens in North America or North Africa – from protectionist politics to deforestation and desertification to the fight against AIDS – can affect your lives wherever you live, even here in North India. And your choices here – what you buy, how you vote – can resound far away. As someone once said about water pollution, we all live downstream. We are all interconnected, and we can no longer afford the luxury of not thinking about the rest of the planet in anything we do.

Our choice is clear: we must be globally active if we are to create and maintain the society we want at home. And our success at home is the best guarantee that we will be respected and effective abroad.

After all, your own lives reflect a variety of global experiences. What does it mean to be a young person in Delhi or Aligarh today? It can mean waking up to an alarm clock made in China, downing a cup of tea from leaves first planted by the British, donning jeans designed in America and taking a Japanese scooter or a Korean car to get to an Indian college, where your textbooks might be printed with German-invented technology on paper first pulped in Sweden. You might call your friends on a Finnish mobile phone to invite them to an Italian pizza or even what you think of as desi khana, featuring naan that came here from Persia, tandoori chicken taught to us by rulers from Uzbekistan and aloo and hari mirch that first came to India only 400 years ago from Latin America. And the most desi thing of all, of course, is suspicion of anything foreign.

Suspicion of things foreign has hardly been absent from our own country’s political experience. In India, self-reliance and economic self-sufficiency were a mantra for more than four decades after independence, and there were real doubts as to whether the country should open itself further to the world economy. Whereas in most of the West, most people axiomatically associate capitalism with freedom, India’s nationalists associated capitalism with slavery. Why? Because the British East India Company came to trade and stayed on to rule. So India’s nationalist leaders were suspicious of every foreigner with a briefcase, seeing him as the thin edge of a neo-imperial wedge. Instead of integrating India into the global capitalist system, as only a handful of post-colonial countries like Singapore chose to do, India’s leaders (and those of most of the former colonies) were convinced that the political independence they had fought for so hard and long could only be guaranteed through economic independence. So self-reliance became the slogan, the protectionist barriers went up, and India spent 45 years with bureaucrats rather than businessmen on the “commanding heights” of the economy, often, despite the best of intentions, subsidizing unproductivity, regulating stagnation and effectively, if unwittingly, distributing not wealth but poverty. (Which only goes to prove that one of the lessons you learn from history is that history sometimes teaches the wrong lessons.)

It was only after a world-class financial crisis in 1991, when our Government had to physically ship its reserves of gold to London to stand collateral for an IMF loan, failing which we might have defaulted on our debt, that India liberalized its economy under our then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh. Since then we have become a poster-child for globalization. Our growth and prosperity would be impossible without the rest of the world.

To the young people here, let me say that you are likely to spend a lot of your adult lives interacting with people who don’t look, sound, dress or eat like you; that you might work for an internationally-oriented company with clients, colleagues or investors from around the globe; and that you are likely to take your holidays in far-flung destinations. The world into which you will grow will be full of such opportunities. But along with such opportunities, you may also find yourself vulnerable to threats from beyond our borders: terrorism, of course, but also transnational crime syndicates, counterfeiters of currency, drug smugglers, child traffickers, internet spammers, credit-card crooks and even imported illnesses like swine flu.

Wouldn’t you want your government to devise policies to deal with such challenges that would affect your, and one day your children’s, lives? Should such policies, in an ever more interdependent world, even be called foreign? One of the reasons that foreign policy matters today is that foreign policy is no longer merely foreign: it affects you right here where you live. You want your government to seize the opportunities that the 21st century world provides, while managing the risks and protecting you from the threats that this world has also opened you up to.

Indians therefore have a growing stake in international developments. To put it another way, the food we grow and we eat, the air we breathe, and our health, security, prosperity and quality of life are increasingly affected by what happens beyond our borders. And that means we can simply no longer afford to be indifferent about our neighbours, however distant they may appear. Ignorance is not a shield; it is not even, any longer, an excuse. Knowledge of others, on the other hand, brings great advantages in today’s world.

At the same time, much of what we are in the process of accomplishing at home – to pull our people out of poverty and to develop our nation — enables us to contribute to a better world. This is of value in itself, and it is also in our fundamental national interest. A world that is peaceful and prosperous, where trade is freer and universally-agreed principles are observed, and in which democracy, the co-existence of civilizations and respect for human rights flourish, is a world of opportunity for India and for Indians to thrive.

If this century has, in the famous phrase, made the world safe for democracy, the next challenge is to make a world safe for diversity. It is in India’s interest to ensure that the world as a whole must reflect the idea that is already familiar to all Indians — that it shouldn’t matter what the colour of your skin is, the kind of food you eat, the sounds you make when you speak, the God you choose to worship (or not), so long as you want to play by the same rules as everybody else, and dream the same dreams. It is not essential in a democratic world to agree all the time, as long as we agree on the ground rules of how we will disagree. These are the global principles we must strive to uphold if we are to be able to continue to uphold them securely at home.

Because the distinction between domestic and international is less and less meaningful in today’s world, when we think of foreign policy we must also think of its domestic implications. The ultimate purpose of any country’s foreign policy is to promote the security and well-being of its own citizens. We want a world that gives us the conditions of peace and security that will permit us to grow and flourish, safe from foreign depredations but open to external opportunities.

At the same time there is a consensus in our country that India should seek to continue to contribute to international security and prosperity, to a well-ordered and equitable world, and to democratic, sustainable development for all.

This we will continue to do, and we will do so in an environment in which change is the only constant. If I may be permitted the indulgence of a personal reminiscence, let me tell you how much my old organization, the UN, has been transformed in the career span of this one former UN official speaking to you. If I had even suggested to my seniors when I joined the Organization in 1978 that the UN would one day observe and even run elections in sovereign states, conduct intrusive inspections for weapons of mass destruction, impose comprehensive sanctions on the entire import-export trade of a Member State, create a counter-terrorism committee to monitor national actions against terrorists, or set up international criminal tribunals and coerce governments into handing over their citizens to be tried by foreigners under international law, I am sure they would have told me that I simply did not understand what the United Nations was all about. (And indeed, since that was in the late 1970s, they might well have asked me – “Young man, what have you been smoking?”)

And yet the UN has done every one of those things during the last two decades, and more. It is a reflection of how much the world around has evolved since the era when the Cold War seemed frozen in place, borders seemed immutable, and the Soviet Union looked as if it would last for ever. If all of those things could change so dramatically within one generation, shouldn’t we be better prepared, as a country and a society, for similar changes to happen in the lifetime of your generation?

Indeed, the institutions of global governance have been expanding beyond the UN itself. There are selective inter-governmental mechanisms like the G-8, military alliances like NATO, sub-regional groupings like the Economic Community of West African States, one-issue alliances like the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Writers connect under International PEN, soccer players in FIFA, athletes under the International Olympic Committee, mayors in the World Organization of United Cities and Local Governments. Bankers listen to the Bank of International Settlements and businessmen to the International Accounting Standards Board. The process of regulating human activity above and beyond national boundaries has never been more widespread.

To these elements of international co-operation we must add a veritable alphabet soup of new bodies and new arrangements for multilateral engagement. India alone belongs to IBSA, to BRIC, to SAARC and the East Asian Summit; it is a member of the G-20 and the ARF; it observes the meetings of the SCO and attends the G-8. It pursues its interests in organizations as universal and well-known as the UN and as small and obscure as IOR-ARC.

It’s not just multilateral organizations we should think about: the world has changed in other ways too. Today, the smartest executive jets are made by Embraer of Brazil; the tallest building in the world is currently in Dubai, an incomplete structure that has just overtaken the previous tallest building, in Taipei; the world’s biggest plane is being built in Russia and Ukraine; the world’s largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore; the biggest shopping mall is in Beijing; and the country with the largest number of nationals in the Forbes list of the world’s ten richest people is India, with four billionaires whose combined assets, once valued at $180 billion, exceed those of the majority of the member states of the United Nations. Thirty years ago, all these categories would have been headed by the United States. The US remains the world’s sole superpower, but others are catching up fast in various areas where it had alone been dominant.

This is the world to which India must learn to adapt. It was Mahatma Gandhi who famously said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” That applies to India too. We seek to redefine our place in a world that has changed from the geopolitical realities of 1945 which shaped the current international system, including the permanent membership of the Security Council. We are today one of the world’s largest economies, a proud player on the global stage with a long record of responsible conduct on international matters. But is our foreign policy apparatus commensurate with the challenge? Is our society as a whole imbued with a consciousness of the strategic opportunity that engagement with the globe offers? Can we be taken seriously as a potential world leader in the 21st century if we do not develop the institutions, the practices, the personnel and the mindset required to lead in the global arena?

Our foreign policy debates in Parliament and the media seem obsessed with Pakistan or with ephemera, or worse, ephemera about Pakistan. There is little appetite for an in-depth discussion about, say, the merits of participating in the Non-Aligned Movement or the Conference of Democracies, or the importance we should give to such bodies as SAARC or the Indian Ocean Rim Conference. As Minister of State for External Affairs I suppose I should be grateful, even relieved, at being allowed to get on with foreign policy making without the interference of the general public. But in my view foreign policy is too important an issue to be left to the Ministry of External Affairs alone. Our society as a whole, and particularly its educated young people, must care enough about India’s place in the world to participate actively in shaping our international posture.

And yet the picture around us is a pretty dismal one. International relations is a neglected subject on our campuses; I have deliberately chosen to speak on this topic at a college/university, which does not offer a course of study in international relations. The few colleges that do offer the subject do so in a formalistic and formulaic fashion that ill-equip the student to understand the realities of our contemporary world. JNU apart, few can hold a candle to the universities in China, Russia or the West that teach international relations to young people of a similar age to the majority of you.

We do have a handful of thinkers on international issues and a fistful of think-tanks, but in quantum and quality of expertise and range of output they all have a long way to go before they match the role played by, for example, their equivalents in the United States.

And what about the young people so well represented here today, who must shape the future orientation of India to the world? A young Indian scholar, Raja Karthikeya Gundu, recently wrote: “Few Indian students go beyond the West for study, and even if they wanted to, there are barely any scholarships or resources from government or private sector to do so. The average Indian has barely any understanding of foreign cultures, norms and worldviews, and satellite TV and Internet have not managed to change this. Hence, in the absence of global exposure, Indians continue to be an inward-looking nation burdened by prejudice. Thus, it is no surprise that when Indians travel abroad for the first time in their mature years, they are often culturally inadaptable and even mildly xenophobic.” This strikes me as somewhat overstated, and yet there is a kernel of truth in it.

The situation will not improve unless we improve the study of international affairs at our colleges and universities. Last year I was invited by my Singaporean friend Kishore Mahbubani to join a gathering organized by his Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, of some of the most eminent scholars of International Relations to brainstorm on improving the current state of the discipline in India. I couldn’t join his effort but one scholar who did, Amitabh Mattoo, observed that “There are few other disciplines in India… where the gulf between the potential and the reality is as wide as it is in the teaching and research of IR at Indian universities. Interest in India and India’s interest in the world are arguably at their highest in modern times, and yet Indian scholarship on global issues is showing few signs of responding to this challenge.”

Today, IR is taught in more than 100 universities in India, but in Mattoo’s words, “most of the IR departments have a shortage of qualified faculty, poor infrastructure, outdated curriculum and few research opportunities”. More than half the departments do not even have access to the internet, and are deprived of the rich wealth of online resources that students elsewhere in the world can command. Books and journals are in short supply. Little expertise has been developed in specific areas or countries of concern to India; to take one example, despite all the fuss about the reference to Balochistan in the recent joint statement at Sharm-el Shaikh, there is no major scholar of Baloch studies in India to whom either the MEA or its critics can turn. Foreign languages are poorly taught, resources for study trips abroad are scarce, research is of varying quality and opportunities for cross-fertilization at academic conferences practically non-existent. Whereas China, a latecomer to the field, has already developed, in the last three decades, a critical mass of students and scholars of IR, we are behind where we were in the heady days of the Nehruvian 1950s when we established bodies like Sapru House and the Indian Council of World Affairs which we have allowed to atrophy.

My friend Kanti Bajpai has argued that “Rising powers seem to get the IR they need.” But it won’t just happen. We need to change the way we all think about international relations – you, the future leaders of this country, and we, its present ones. The MEA is willing to play its part, in collaboration with those responsible for educational policy, to bring about the change I have been calling for.

To return to Amitabh Mattoo, he warns “India’s inability to develop a sophisticated and comprehensive understanding of the world outside will have more serious consequences than just the dwarfing of a discipline. It could well stunt India¡¦s ability to influence the international system.¡¨ That is an outcome that, for all the reasons I have described, we can ill afford.

Mahatma Gandhi’s point about “being the change” applies to my Ministry too. Even though my experience of it from within is relatively new, I do believe there are some changes we ourselves can bring about and which I will be advocating in the months ahead. Some specific examples:

• As I said earlier, I believe foreign policy is much too important an issue to be left to the Foreign Ministry alone. Discussion of international relations should not be confined to the seminar rooms in Delhi, and that is why I was delighted on 11th August 2009 to lead a seminar on Indo-Arab relations in Cochin. All Indians, even 2000 kilometers away from the nation¡¦s capital, have a vital stake in the development of our foreign policy. I would welcome much more spirited exchanges between MEA officials and academia, the corporate sector and civil society, in person, through regular meetings and even email, respecting confidentiality but not fighting shy of ideas or opinion that challenges our entrenched mindsets.
• Foreign language assignments to IFS officers. I have been struck by how often I have come across Chinese speakers in our consulates in Germany or Anglophone diplomats in France. Surely we can aim at a time when every national language is spoken by at least one Indian officer and an eventual time when every one of our missions is headed by an Ambassador who knows the language, be it Khmer or Korean, Spanish or Swahili.
• I have written elsewhere of the need to develop and exploit India’s considerable “soft power”, by making this integral to the work of our territorial divisions, rather than leaving it solely to umbrella entities like ICCR and the Public Diplomacy Division. This will mean taking Indian literature, culture, music and dance abroad as an adjunct to Indian diplomacy, and doing so within a context of a coherent public diplomacy strategy that weaves together many institutions that currently function separately.
• Recently, we have seen the stirrings of a purposeful debate on whether the IFS exam should be distinct and separate from others in the UPSC. During my days in college, pretty much everyone aimed at the Foreign Service, and the Foreign Service drew exclusively from the top ten finishers in the national competitive examinations. Today, as working abroad for the government has lost some of its allure, this is no longer the case; indeed, for many applicants the IFS is a third or even fourth preference amongst the career options available to those who do well in the exams. I feel strongly that a diplomat should not be someone who fell short of his or her real goal of being an administrator, revenue official or police officer. We need internationalist-minded young Indians who see the chance of serving the country abroad not only as a privilege but as something indispensable to India’s growth and prosperity.

The tragedy of 26/11 confirmed yet again how much greater coordination we need among the many programmes and players in government involved with security and other international issues, and how essential is the modernization of our domestic and international instruments to keep Indians safe. We will have to work harder in government, and with Indians of all walks of life – including business groups interested in foreign markets and in international investors — to ensure that we break down the “narrow domestic walls” that Tagore wrote about and promote a coherent, visible Indian approach to the world, backed with sufficient resources to take action and to get our messages across clearly. This will help to ensure that India remains influential on issues of concern in an increasingly competitive world.

In other words, the sustainability and success of our international policy depends on both leadership by the Government of India and the active involvement of young Indians. The Government is committed to protecting and advancing the global citizenship of all of you, but it cannot be done without your strong involvement.

The world, I am convinced, is going your way. You are a new, globalized, impatient generation of Indians who rightly refuse to be confined to the limited worldviews of older generations. The horizons of your world are ever widening. The prospects for international engagement, for more widespread prosperity, for more borderless success, have never been brighter. But the world needs your commitment, too.

I call upon you all today to commit yourself to thinking about India and the world – about India in the world – and your own role in learning about it, helping to shape it, and one day, I hope, helping to lead it.

Thank you.

17 August 2009, New Delhi

I am honoured and delighted to be here for the release of this wonderful publication of ASSOCHAM on business and trade opportunities in the Arab world. I would like to compliment ASSOCHAM for this initiative and their efforts to foster business and trade links with the Arab world. I would also like to compliment the Arab Missions and the Arab League Mission for their cooperative efforts to bring out this publication. I am sure that this Manual will go a long way towards further enhancing our excellent relations with the Arab world.

2. India-Arab relations is a subject close to my heart. Personally, not only have I travelled to several Arab countries in the course of my international career, but after I left my job at the UN, I was temporarily doing business out of Dubai. This put me in direct contact with Arab people and I have come away very impressed not only with their intrinsic abilities and entrepreneurial skills but also with their deep sense of appreciation of the historic, cultural and civilizational ties that bind India and the Arab countries. As this is a business event, I would refrain from going into the history of our relations, although I must admit that I am tempted to do so. However, here it should be enough to say that the bedrock of our relations is strong and enduring. Having said that, just because we have had centuries-old relations does not mean that we do not have to endeavour to sustain and nurture our present day relations. If anything, it needs more hard work by all concerned so that we are not lulled into complacency. The enormous bank of goodwill and mutual comprehension between our two regions allows us to build a strong edifice of substantial contemporary relations.

3. India considers the Arab region very important in shaping our political, economic, trade, defence and security policies at both the regional and global level. Our approach on issues affecting the Arab world is based on principles, not expediency. India has endeavored to follow the spirit of South-South solidarity and cooperation in its dealings with the Arab world. In keeping with our desire to strengthen our relations with the countries of the region we are trying to put in place a structure of multifaceted cooperation covering all sectors. It is a matter of satisfaction that our efforts are being matched in equal measure by the countries of the Arab world.

4. Arab countries, as vital sources of oil and gas whether from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia or more recently from Egypt, Sudan and the Maghreb, have become essential to India’s energy security needs. Indian companies have secured concessions or have otherwise invested in the oil sector significantly in Sudan, Egypt and Libya. Less publicized, perhaps, is the enormous importance to India’s food security of countries such as Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria as providers of rock phosphate and phosphoric acid and potash, all of which translate into fertilizer for our farmers. Egypt has emerged as a significant Indian investment destination with Indian investments estimated at over US $500 million. Some Indian companies are also exploring possibilities of setting up plants to manufacture phosphoric intermediates in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Jordan. We are also examining the possibilities of working together with Syria in this regard. As Shri Agarwal has just informed us UAE is our second largest trading partner after China. These are important milestones on our road to enhance economic cooperation.

5. Besides the hydrocarbon and fertilizers sectors, Indian companies have executed or are in the process of completing a variety of projects including those financed by concessional lines of credit. Examples include a thermal power plant in Sudan, a cement plant in Djibouti, an architecturally complex bridge in Jordan and a variety of projects in Libya.

6. Now coming to the question of trade, we see that India’s trade with Arab countries is booming. A look at our figures of trade is illuminating. We have already heard that the Gulf region has emerged as a major trading partner of India. During 2006-2007 the total two-way trade was US $ 47 billion and in the year 2007-08 it reached more than US$ 76 billion. According to ASSOCHAM, this year over $ 100 billion is supposed to be our two-way trade with the Gulf region. Trade with the non-Gulf Arab countries totaled more than US$ 13 billion in 2007-08. Total trade with Arab countries was about US$ 90 billion in 2007-08.

7. I am happy to inform you that to give a boost to trade relations, we are negotiating with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to conclude an India-GCC Free Trade Agreement (FTA). This would complement our ongoing and rapidly expanding bilateral economic engagement with individual member countries of GCC. The third GCC-India Industrial Conference, which was held in Mumbai in 2007, was a success and it has further consolidated our economic interaction. We are working to hold the fourth GCC-India Industrial Conference in November this year. The 2nd Indo-Arab Investment Conclave, in which all Arab countries and Arab Ambassadors are partners, will be held in Delhi in February next year.

8. India has always shown its willingness to share with our Arab brethren our experience and expertise in institution and capacity building, governance, science and technology including Information Technology and biotechnology, healthcare and higher education including training of Arab officials, diplomats, soldiers and scholars. The Secretary General of the League of Arab States and my good friend, H.E. Mr. Amre Moussa, visited India in November-December 2008. We are working on spirited implementation of the Memorandum of Cooperation signed between India and the League of Arab States during the visit and on the establishment of an Arab-Indian Cooperation Forum. This will greatly deepen our relations in many sectors including energy, education, human resources development and trade and investment. I look forward to cooperation from all to carry this ambitious agenda forward.

9. Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Arab world has always figured very high in India’s foreign and trade policy priorities. India considers the Arab world a key part of its strategic neighbourhood. India desires to strengthen cooperation to explore opportunities across the entire spectrum of potentialities that exist. We wish to work together today with an eye on tomorrow: to consolidate our ties in emerging sectors of the economy so that we can develop a framework for future generations. Our economies are complementary. In many areas, countries in the Arab world have the capital, while India offers the opportunities, especially for the development of infrastructure. The more the long-term linkages that India and the Arab world develop, the greater will be our mutual stakes and interests in each other’s success and prosperity. I want to assure our Arab friends that it is not only financial investments that we are thinking of: we are invested in the future of our relationship.

10. While concluding, I would like to underline that we have in place a framework for cooperation, which is constantly deepening and widening. While its pace could be faster, a critical mass has already developed to take us into a qualitatively upgraded relationship. There are many dimensions to Indo-Arab relations, some very old and some very new. I am sure that this Manual brought out by ASSOCHAM will contribute in substantive measure to one important aspect – business and trade relations. I would encourage ASSOCHAM to bring out a similar Manual on India in the Arabic language for distribution in all the Arab countries. I wish all success to our joint efforts and ASSOCHAM and the Missions of Arabic countries in India to boost Indo-Arab relations and take them to an even higher plane.

Thank you.

Mr Francois Stamm, Head of Regional Delegation, ICRC, New Delhi
Shri Mahesh Bhatt, Eminent Film Personality, who delivered the kind of speech we all like to hear but Ministers can never deliver,
Mr Arthur Mattli, Charge d’Affaires, Embassy of Switzerland
Dr S P Agarwal, Secretary General, Indian Red Cross Society
Mr Azmat Ulla, Head of the Regional Delegation, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, New Delhi
Distinguished participants,

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends

“Even wars have limits”. These four words sum up the Four Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, whose 60th Anniversary we are gathered here to celebrate. Not a retirement age, Francois, what we in India call Shastyabdapurti – a landmark 60th birthday.

For millions of people around the world, the rules enshrined in these Conventions have meant, improved detention conditions, fewer indiscriminate attacks against civilians and the availability of medical care for those affected by armed conflict over the past 60 years.

While war itself is inhuman, the Geneva Conventions have offered hope for persons under occupation, captured on the battlefield, shipwrecked at sea or being transported to receive medical care during some of the most difficult times – during armed conflict.

But rules placing limits on behaviour in war have their origins well before 1949. and the human instinct to provide succour to victims is as old as humanity.

The first laws of war were proclaimed by major civilizations several millennia before our era. Many ancient texts including Chinese warrior codes, the Mahabharata, the Bible and the Koran contain rules advocating respect for those no longer taking part in hostilities and for fellow warriors. For instance, in the Code of Manu, which we may have our differences with on feminist grounds, but which has many enlightened injunctions we find the following prohibitions: “when he fights with his foes in battle, let him not strike with weapons concealed (in wood), nor with (such as are) barbed, poisoned, or the points of which are blazing with fire.” (All techniques that had been used:- warfare up to that point.) Similarly, a branch of Buddhism includes the Vimalakirti Sutra, which contains the following verse, “In times of war, give rise in yourself to the mind of compassion…”

Since you are publishing a Hindi edition of “A memory of Sohana”, let me mention that we also have an early Indian example of a “Henri Dunant”. After the battle of Anandpur in 1704 between the Mughal army and the Sikhs, Bhai Kanhaiya, went around the battlefield serving water to and tending the wounded from both sides.

The codification of international humanitarian law (IHL, or the law of armed conflict) in treaty form, was sparked by the events of another anniversary this year, that of the 150 years since Henry Dunant, a 31-year old Swiss businessman, (and it is striking how young he was when he changed the world), witnessed the aftermath of a bloody battle in Solferino (Italy), between the armies of imperial Austria and the Franco-Sardinian alliance. Around 40,000 men lay dead or wounded on the battlefield. The wounded lacked medical attention and so he organised local people to attend to the soldiers’ wounds and to feed and comfort them. On his return to Geneva he called for the creation of national relief societies to assist those wounded in war, and sowed the seed for the future Geneva Conventions.

The as we have been reminded today, the Red Cross was born in 1863 when five men, including Henry Dunant, set up the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, later to become the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In 1864, 12 governments adopted the first Geneva Convention, a milestone in the history of IHL, offering care to the wounded and sick on the battlefield.

This was followed by important developments in 1907 (protection of combatants wounded at sea), and in 1929 (protection of prisoners of war). On August 12, 1949 the Four Geneva Conventions were adopted, which included updates of the previous three Conventions and a new Fourth Convention protecting civilians. We also therefore celebrate today the international community’s decision 60 years ago to establish new rules on how civilians should be treated in armed conflict, as well as rules governing non-international armed conflict. In 1977 two more protocols were added and another in 2005. Without them our understanding of international law today would be very different.

The Fourth Convention in particular was one of the international community’s key responses to the horrors witnessed during the Second World War. Each of the Four Conventions is directed toward the protection of different classes of the victims of war, namely, the wounded and sick in armed forces in the field; the wounded, sick and shipwrecked among armed forces at sea; prisoners of war; and civilians.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has been instrumental in drafting the Geneva Conventions and in pushing for greater respect of these rules in armed conflict. The path Henry Dunant started led us to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which, for the first time in history, constitute treaties now acceded to by the entire world’s treaty-signing States – in other worlds, they are truly universal.

When the Geneva Conventions were adopted, conflicts were more likely to take place between States. However, the last 60 years have witnessed more non-international armed conflicts than international armed conflicts, while fewer rules regulate internal armed conflict. “Common Article 3” therefore, has been invoked by the ICRC as often as any other provision of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Access by humanitarian organisations, including but not limited to, the ICRC, to conflict areas, remains an essential element in seeking to alleviate the suffering caused by armed conflicts.

Since the 1864 Geneva Convention was open for signature, the Swiss Government has played the important role of depositary of the Conventions, and I am pleased to see their participation at this event. India was the fifth State in the world to deposit its instrument of ratification of the 1949 Conventions with the Swiss Federal Council, doing so after only Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco and Chile. We are also the first country in the region to adopt specific implementing legislation for the 1949 Conventions, through the 1960 Geneva Conventions Act.

The Red Cross movement also has a long history in India. During the First World War, in 1914, there was no organization in India for relief services to the affected soldiers, except a branch of the St. John Ambulance Association and a Joint Committee of the British Red Cross. (It was for St. John’s that Mahatma Gandhi organized ambulances in South India.) A bill to constitute the Indian Red Cross Society, Independent of the British Red Cross, was adopted in March 1920, and The Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) is a member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. It partners with other national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, along with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (IFRC), and the ICRC.

The relevance of IHL in the present day international situation remains high. The nature of conflicts has changed over time. Unfortunately, the South Asian region is not an exception. We have witnessed conflicts in many different forms, including what is commonly referred to as ‘terrorism’. While the Geneva Conventions in particular and IHL in general do not provide a universal definition of terrorism, they explicitly prohibit most acts committed against civilians and civilian objects in armed conflict that would commonly be considered “terrorist” if committed in peacetime. Terrorism violates one of the most important tenets of IHL, the principle of distinction. Indeed, acts of violence directed against civilians or civilian objects in armed conflict constitute war crimes, or “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions.

Therefore, it is imperative for all of us to underline the significance of IHL. It is true that the lasting solution to conflicts would be possible not through mere legal reform but through certain substantive changes, which also include political and economic reforms. However, regulatory systems such as international humanitarian law mitigate suffering in situations of armed conflict, thus creating a conducive environment for establishing lasting peace. I believe that legal frameworks such as IHL are of enormous significance in shielding the victims of armed conflict from the worst effects of war. As one who had spent a large portion of my own professional life at the UN and laterally, though briefly, at the ICRC, I would like to stress that we therefore strive to ensure that the rules codified 60 years ago are respected in practice.

Thank you very much.

Dr V A Mohandas, Principal, Maharaja’s College
H.E. Dr Noureddine Bardad-Daidj, Ambassador of Algeria to India
H.E Mr Khidir Haroon Ahmed, Ambassador of Sudan to India
H.E. Dr Ahmed Salem Saleh Al-Washishi, the Chief Representative of the
League of Arab States Mission in India
Dr Ebraheem Mohammad Al Batshan of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
Dr Jameela Beevi, Vice Principal
Prof VN Chandramohan, Syndicate Member of MG University
Prof Jayakumar, Syndicate Member, MG University
Dr Liaqath Ali, Head of Arabic department
Faculty Members, Ladies and Gentlemen
And my dear Students,

I am honoured and delighted to be here to inaugurate this international seminar on “New Dimensions of Indo-Arab Relations” in this prestigious college in my home State, which is also a seat of excellence of learning in India. It gives me immense pleasure to further note that this Seminar is being organized in the Maharaja’s college with the support of the Policy Planning and Research Division of the Ministry of External Affairs. As some of you are no doubt aware, the Policy Planning Division of the Ministry of External Affairs undertakes studies on general foreign policy issues. For this purpose, it maintains interaction and liaison with the Area Studies Centres of the University Grants Commission. The Division also extends financial assistance to various academic institutions and think tanks located in different parts of the country for holding conferences, seminars and for research. Kerala has a long history of openness to the rest of the world and that is why we are particularly happy to be associated for this event with the Maharaja’s College.

2. I am happy to see the presence of many eminent personalities here including Ambassadors and diplomats from many Arab states. This will certainly provide this Seminar an added profile. The deliberations as well as recommendations of the Seminar will carry greater weight and reach the appropriate audiences. I would like to compliment the organizers of the Seminar for their initiative and their efforts to make this a memorable event.

3. India-Arab relations is a subject close to my heart. Personally, not only have I travelled to several Arab countries in the course of my international career, but after I left my job at the UN, I was temporarily resident in Dubai in my bid to work with various institutions to bring, amongst other things, quality and affordable education to my home state of Kerala. This put me in direct contact with Arab people and I have come away very impressed not only with their intrinsic abilities and entrepreneurial skills but also with their deep sense of appreciation of the historic, cultural and civilizational ties that bind India and the Arab countries. As a student of history as well as an ardent believer in the importance of history in shaping our destiny I propose to deal today with some aspects of our historical relations with Arab countries. This will show all of us how our relations cannot be anything but excellent.

4. Our ties predate our emergence as nation states. Not only did Arabs and Indians knew each other before the advent of Islam but it is said that the Arabs even played a crucial role in the emergence of the very notion of “Hindustan” and even in giving a name to the religion of Hinduism. We can argue whether it is to the Arabs, Persians or Greeks that we owe the concept of the Hindu – the people who live across the river Sindhu or Indus – but there is no doubt that the people of India were referred to as Hindus by the Arabs long before the Hindus themselves called themselves Hindus.

5. The Arabian Sea, which washes the shores of both our regions, has played a crucial role in the cultivation of our relations. India’s cultural links with West Asia can be traced to the early years of recorded history. There is evidence, for instance, of trade links between the Harappan civilization and that of Dilmun in the Gulf. In pre-Islamic times, Arab traders acted as middlemen in trade between Bharuch in Gujarat and Puduchery and the Mediterranean through Alexandria and even through the Palakkad gap as evidenced in archaeological finds of Roman coins and artefacts in southern India. On-going excavations in the Red Sea coast continually produce fresh evidence of perhaps even older links. And it is no accident that so many distinguished Arab families in many different Arab countries bear the surname al-Hindi, or that Hind is still a desirable name used by many Arab women.

6. Some scholars trace Indian studies on the hadith to the early days of the arrival of Islam in India in the South in the 7th century and in the north in the 8th century AD. Islamic scholars from the turn of the 8th Century AD to al- Baruni (d.1048 AD) have, in their writings, documented Indo-Arab cultural links, including Indian contributions to Arab thought and culture. Translations of Indian works were sponsored by the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad where, especially under Harun al-Rashid, Indian concepts in secular subjects ranging from medicine to mathematics and astronomy were absorbed into the corpus of Arab scientific writing. Scholars have also documented the compilation of a large number of Indian works in Quranic studies over the last 500 years as also in Islamic jurisprudence over a slightly longer period. Perhaps less remembered today is the contribution of Indians to Islamic scholarship in the medieval period. Amongst notable scholars was Shah Waliullah of Delhi and his descendants. Indeed, so important were these contributions that in an article in West Asia and the Region brought out last year by the Center for West Asian Studies of Jamia Millia Islamia, the following tribute from the Lebanese scholar Rasheed Rada is to be found:

If our brothers, Indian Ulama had not taken care of the science of hadith in this period, the same would have disappeared from the Eastern countries, because that branch of knowledge had become weak in Egypt, Sham (Syria Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine), Iraq and Hijaz since the 16th century A.D and it reached its weakest point at the beginning of the 20th century A.D.

7. Travellers between India and the Arab world were the vehicles not only for scholarly exchanges but also for cultural interaction at a popular level. Much of the Sufi tradition is the result of Indo-Arab interaction and Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, whose shrine at Ajmer is visited by people of many faiths, was himself an Arab. Over centuries, stories from the Panchatantra have blended with the Fables of Aesop and stories from Alf Laila wa Laila or the Arabian Nights. Some Arab travellers, such as the Moroccan Ibn Batuta occasionally found themselves elevated to positions of power by their hosts; Ibn Batuta was, for a while, made the Qazi of Delhi, even though he was unfamiliar with the school of Islamic jurisprudence used in India. As Dr Liaqath Ali has reminded us, many Arabic words can be found in several languages particularly in Hindi and Urdu.

8. The adventures of seafarers who have ridden the waves and tides of the Arabian Sea on their dhows are the stuff of legend. I have even heard that story that it was an Indian seafarer who regularly traveled between Kerala and the Arab settlements on the east coast of the African continent who might have guided Vasco da Gama to the Indian coast at Kozhikode. It is for scholars of history to debate on the accuracy of this tale, but what is not debatable is that these ties have hundreds if not thousands of years of antiquity and are responsible for the civilizational melting pots that all of us have inherited and thrived in. Another compelling example would be enough to illustrate my point and this is the worldwide use of what are known in the West as Arabic numerals, but which the Arabs themselves acknowledge they learned from India.

9. The early years of the 20th century, marked as they were by the beginning of the end of Western colonialism, witnessed much interest in the fortunes of the Arab and Islamic world within our own freedom movement. The Khilafat struggle perhaps best exemplified this. And one of our great nationalist leaders, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, was born in Mecca and studied at the famous al-Azhar University of Egypt. The leaders of our freedom movement closely monitored developments in Egypt and other countries, a trend that was also noticeable after we gained freedom. The struggle of the FLN in Algeria and President Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal and the Suez Crisis of 1956 were but two important historical developments that found resonance in India’s support for our fraternal Arab peoples.

10. Having said that, let me now move to our contemporary relations. Just because we have had centuries-old relations does not mean that we do not have to endeavour to sustain and nurture our present day relations. If anything, it needs more hard work by all concerned so that we are not lulled into complacency. The bedrock of goodwill between our two regions allows us to build a strong edifice of substantial contemporary relations. India considers the Arab region very important role in shaping our political, economic, defence and security policies at both the regional and global level. Let me make it very clear. Our approach on issues affecting the Arab world is based on principles, not expediency. India has endeavored to follow the spirit of South-South solidarity and cooperation in its dealings with the Gulf and Arab world. In this context, it is not surprising to note that that the number of flights to the Gulf region, for instance, is more than the total number of flights from India to the rest of the world.

11. Whereas the world has heard of our “Look East” policy in South-East Asia, as far as the Arab world is concerned, we are proud that we have a “Look West” policy too, and “West” here does not refer to Europe or America. In keeping with our desire to strengthen our relations with the countries of the region we are trying to put in place a structure of multifaceted cooperation covering all sectors. It is a matter of satisfaction that our efforts are being matched in equal measure by the countries of the Arab world. 2008 witnessed several high-level visits, bilaterally manifesting the importance of the region in our relationship, peaking with our Prime Minister’s visit to Qatar and Oman in November 2008. The visit of the Vice President of India to Kuwait in April 2009 opened up new facets for cooperation.

12. Let me take this opportunity to address one important aspect of India-Arab relations i.e. the issue of Palestine. India’s solidarity with the Palestinian people and its attitude to the Palestinian question reflects, perhaps more than any other issue, the enduring nature of Indo-Arab ties. It was as early as in 1936 that the Congress Working Committee sent greetings to Palestine and on 27 September 1936 Palestine Day was first observed in India. The 1939 Session of the Indian National Congress adopted a Resolution on Palestine and looked forward to the emergence of an independent democratic state in Palestine in which Jewish rights would be protected. India was a member of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. In 1974, it became the first non-Arab country to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In March 1980, the Government of India announced in Parliament India’s decision to accord full diplomatic recognition to the PLO office in New Delhi. It was after this that the late Yasser Arafat paid a three-day official visit to India in March 1980. It was during this visit that Mr. Arafat described India as “an eternal friend”. In 1988, India recognised Palestine as a State. Construction of the Palestine Embassy building in New Delhi, a gift of the people and Government of India, is nearing completion. The continuing tradition of exchange of high level visits, which saw us welcoming President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in June 2008 and President Mubarak of Egypt in November 2008, also witnessed a State visit by President Mahmoud Abbas to New Delhi in October 2008.

13. India has had a consistent and unwavering record of support for the Palestinian cause since the days of our freedom struggle. Our policy is in line with United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973, the Quartet Roadmap and the Arab Peace Initiative. India supports a united, independent, viable, sovereign state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, living within secure and recognised borders side by side at peace with Israel. We have expressed concern for the continuing expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. India also supports Palestine in a variety of tangible ways. In March 2009, $10 million were contributed as budget support for the Palestine National Authority. We also assist Palestine in developing its human resources through the ITEC programme.

14. Reverting to the broad nature of India-Arab relations, Arab countries, as vital sources of oil and gas whether from the Gulf or more recently from Egypt, Sudan and the Maghreb, have become essential to India’s energy security needs. Indian companies have secured concessions or have otherwise invested in the oil sector significantly in Sudan, Egypt and Libya. Less publicized, perhaps, is the enormous importance to India’s food security of countries such as Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria as providers of rock phosphate and phosphoric acid and potash, all of which translate into fertilizer for our farmers.

15. Egypt has emerged as a significant Indian investment destination with Indian investments estimated at over US $500 million. Some Indian companies are also exploring possibilities of setting up plants to manufacture phosphoric intermediates in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Jordan. We are also examining the possibilities of working together with Syria in this regard.

16. Besides the hydrocarbon and fertilizers sectors, Indian companies have executed or are in the process of completing a variety of projects including those financed by concessional lines of credit. Examples include a thermal power plant in Sudan, a cement plant in Djibouti, an architecturally complex bridge in Jordan and a variety of projects in Libya.

17. Our trade with Arab countries is booming. A look at our figures of trade with the Arab world is illuminating. For instance the Gulf region has emerged as a major trading partner of India. During 2006-2007 the total two-way trade was US $ 47 billion and in the year 2007-08 it reached more than US$ 76 billion. Trade with the non-Gulf Arab countries totaled more than US$ 13 billion in 2007-08. Total trade with Arab countries was about US$ 90 billion in 2007-08.

18. I am happy to inform you that to give a boost to trade relations, we are negotiating with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to conclude an India-GCC Free Trade Agreement (FTA). This would complement our ongoing and rapidly expanding bilateral economic engagement with individual member countries of GCC. The third GCC-India Industrial Conference, which was held in Mumbai in 2007, was a success and it has further consolidated our economic interaction. We are working to hold the fourth GCC-India Industrial Conference later this year.

19. India has always shown its willingness to share with our Arab brethren our experience and expertise in institution and capacity building, governance, science and technology including Information Technology and biotechnology, healthcare and higher education including training of Arab officials, diplomats, soldiers and scholars. ISRO/Antrix Corporation was awarded a contract in July 2008 for launch of the Algerian satellites. Antrix has completed a remote sensing project involving setting up of an earth station in Algeria using Indian CARTOSAT imagery. India and Egypt concluded an agreement on the peaceful use of outer space during President Mubarak’s 2008 visit. Cooperation in Information & Communication Technology is another area worth mentioning. Recently, Memoranda of Understanding and agreements relating to this area have been signed with Tunisia and Syria.

20. The Secretary General of the League of Arab States and my good friend, H.E. Mr. Amre Moussa, visited India in November-December 2008.I am happy to inform you that during this visit the Memorandum of Cooperation between India and the League of Arab States on the establishment of an Arab-Indian Cooperation Forum was signed in New Delhi. This is a very comprehensive document that looks at deepening our relations in many sectors including energy, education, human resources development and trade and investment. We are looking forward to the spirited implementation of the Memorandum which we are sure will take our relations to new heights. I look forward to cooperation from all to carry this ambitious agenda forward. In this context, I am happy to note that last December, the Ministry of External Affairs worked with the Indian Council of Cultural Relations and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry to organise the first Indo-Arab Cultural Festival in New Delhi with the support of various Arab Missions and governments. The Government of the UAE has recently selected Indian books for translation into Arabic to enhance understanding of our country’s history and literature. We too study Arabic here, as the presence of so many Indian scholars of Arabic here today testifies.

21. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Arab world has always figured very high in India’s foreign policy priorities. India considers the Arab world a key part of its strategic neighbourhood. The Arab world is the only region for which the Government of India has appointed a Special Envoy. India has worked with its Arab friends in a variety of multilateral forums including the United Nations, the Non-aligned Movement and the G-77. India is a major troop contributor to UNIFIL and provides elements to UNDOF. Indian peacekeepers also serve with the UN Mission in Sudan, UNMIS, which acts in support of the Comprehensive Peace Accord of January 2005.

22. Allow me to turn to a subject which is close to the hearts of people of Kerala – the welfare of the Indian community in the Arab countries in general and the Gulf region in particular. The people of India in the Gulf and the Arab world have contributed immensely to the economic development of both India and the countries they reside and work in. The remittances that India receives from the 4.5 million expatriates in Gulf, many of them from Kerala, in the order of more than US$ 10 billion annually, make a significant contribution to India’s economic development. In view of the large Indian population in the region, a number of issues come up from time to time in our relations with these countries which relate to our people-to-people contacts and to consular matters. Active steps have been taken and are continually being taken, in cooperation with the countries of the region, to promote the welfare of the Indian community, particularly expatriate workers. Memoranda of Understanding on manpower have been signed with some countries and are under negotiation with others. These and similar arrangements will enable us to jointly deal with issues relating to the welfare of the expatriate Indian communities in the region. I would like to take this opportunity to assure the people of Kerala that our Government gives high priority to the welfare of Indians in the Gulf and if anybody needs any help or assistance in this regard, my Ministry together with that of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs will always be at your service.

23. India desires to strengthen cooperation to explore opportunities across the entire spectrum of potentialities that exist. We wish to work together today with an eye on tomorrow: to consolidate our ties in emerging sectors of the economy so that we can develop a framework for future generations. Our economies are complementary. In many areas, countries in the Arab world have the capital, while India offers the opportunities, especially for the development of infrastructure. The more the long-term linkages that India and the Arab world develop, the greater will be our mutual stakes and interests in each other’s success and prosperity. I want to assure our Arab friends that it is not only financial investments that we are thinking of: we are invested in the future of our relationship.

24. To summarize, I would like to underline that we have in place a framework for cooperation, which is constantly deepening and widening. While its pace could be faster, a critical mass has already developed to take us into a qualitatively upgraded relationship. There are many dimensions to Indo-Arab relations, some very old and some very new. I am sure the deliberations of this seminar will examine these relations from all perspectives and offer recommendations for augmenting our multi-dimensional cooperation. I look forward to reading and acting upon the recommendations of the seminar.

25. I would like to add another word on a broader theme. I believe strongly that foreign policy is too important a subject to be left to the Foreign Ministry alone. Discussion of international relations should not be confined to the seminar rooms of Delhi. That is why I am delighted by the initiative of Maharaja’s college because I believe all Indians, even 2000 km away from our nation’s capital, have a vital stake in the development of our international relations. I am sure there will be many more such occasions in the future to discuss our country’s external affairs in different parts of India and that we will have the privilege, as we do today, of seeing distinguished diplomats travelling out of Delhi to attend them. I call upon other educational institutions in this state and across India to emulate this example. I wish you well in your deliberations today.

Thank you.

Delegates from abroad, Young Friends

Ladies and Gentlemen

Dr Park Jai Chang, President, Asia and Pacific Alliance of YMCAs,
Mr K John Cherian, National President of YMCA of India
Prof O J Oommen, Vice President of Asia Pacific Alliance of YMCAs (APAY)
Mr Vijay Sewag, President, New Delhi YMCA

Delegates from abroad, Young Friends

Ladies and Gentlemen

I am delighted to be here to deliver the keynote address for the YMCA South Asia Peace Forum, to this gathering of people who are working towards achieving something which we all desire but sadly lack in large measure in many parts of the world. However, it is heartening to note that efforts to build peace and to achieve reconciliation, justice and sustainable livelihoods which would put us at peace with ourselves and with nature are not lacking and this gives us reason for hope rather than despair.

2. At the risk of sounding more formal than necessary, I would here like to highlight the important role that the YMCA movement has played all over the world not only in bringing together young people across the globe but also in serving as a forum for the expression of those precious human qualities which unite people of diverse cultures, ethnicities, religions, genders, and linguistic backgrounds. Although by name it is Christian organisation, we in India, have never seen the YMCA as only the preserve of our Christian brothers and sisters but as a body that belongs to every one of us. In fact, I know from personal experience that people of all regions and creeds actively participate in the activities and programmes of the YMCA. YMCA has become an integral part of the Indian ethos and the Indian way of life. It is not an exaggeration if I say that many of us have somehow and other been touched by YMCA in our lives, whether we have stayed in the YMCA hostel or undergone a training programme or honed our language skills in a YMCA institute, or, as in my case, made our first foray into local politics through a speech at a YMCA centre. This humanitarian and social work of YMCA has built enormous goodwill for the YMCA not only in India but all over the world.

3. In this context, when the message of peace-building and reconciliation comes from YMCA, it carries further and deeper and has greater resonance and relevance. For me, therefore, it is not surprising to see this initiative coming from the YMCA. I am also heartened by the tremendous response the YMCA Peace Forum has obtained, as reflected in the participation of so many delegates from India and abroad.

4. The notion of peace-building rests on an acknowledgement, particularly in post-conflict situations, that peace is not merely the absence of war and does not automatically follow at the end of war. To build peace, one must move from conflict and destruction to relief and rehabilitation, then to sustainable development, and to building democratic political institutions which will collectively help ensure that peace endures and the region does not lapse back into war.

5. With reference to our part of the world which is the focus of this meeting, I would say that as we are host to diverse communities, religions, ethnicities and ways of life, the message of this initiative is very important and relevant. South Asia is perhaps one of the most culturally diverse parts of the world. We are also the most populous and densely populated regions of the world with scarce natural resources. It follows from that we have the greatest requirement to live in harmony with each other and with nature. The mandate of the Asia Pacific Alliance of YMCA of (i) global citizenship and social responsibility; (ii) peace with justice; and (iii) sustainability for life – the three pillars on which Asia Pacific Alliance proposes to work- will find tremendous room for application in our South Asian context.

6. For centuries, South Asia has been the home for the peaceful coexistence of various peoples in harmony with nature. People of many faiths have lived together for ages and our region has given birth to many religions, be it Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism or Jainism. There were practicing Christians on the Malabar coast before Christianity reached Europe. Our society has since times immemorial placed virtue on frugal ways and on extracting the very least from nature. It is not a coincidence that a large percentage of our people are vegetarian. It is because, over the years, people in our region have realised that vegetarianism is a lifestyle that demands less from our planet. For instance, vegetarians contribute far less to global warming than meat-eaters! This is one possible example of the ways and means that this initiative can pick from our region and take the message forward.

7. The approach to implementing peace initiatives in this sub-continent could be learned from ground realities while implementing best practices from around the world. I know that I am addressing experts and therefore would not expand more on this subject. I would only like to reiterate my message that this initiative is most welcome and I am confident the deliberations of this Forum will throw up imaginative ideas on peace building and reconciliation in the South Asian context. I wish you all the best. I have great pleasure in inaugurating this Forum.

Thank you.
YMCA, New Delhi
August 7, 2009