India is a torch bearer for modern times, and given its rich heritage, ancient and modern history, it’s story is crucial for sustainable, peaceful and prosperous future of the planet. For context, France became part of EU more or less from an Empire status, and USA, though an old state, became true democracy only around 60 years back. As Indian democracy is celebrating ‘azaadi ka amrit mahotsav’, EAM makes it very clear that it will not tolerate unnecessary grandstanding.

Addressing the Globsec 2022 Bratislavia Forum, External Affairs Minister Dr. S Jaishankar lambasted the West’s over its glaring hypocrisy on Russian oil imports by India. Referring to the new sanctions, designed to cause minimal or no harm to its population, EAM said, “Europe is buying gas. New packages of sanctions are designed where consideration has been given… timeline is there…not like everything will be cut off instantly…people need to understand if they can be considerate to themselves, surely you can be considerate to others. So if Europe says we have to manage it in a way that the impact on our economy is not traumatic, that freedom or choice should exist for other people as well.” He added, “Tell me buying Russian gas is not funding the war? Why, it’s only Indian money, oil coming to India which funds and not gas coming to Europe which funds.”

The 20th century had started with civil unrest and resourcelessness and political tensions loomed over states across the globe for more than five decades. The entire century was dominated by massively disturbing events like two world wars, nuclear attacks, crisis like Spanish Flu & great depression, Cold War and then the post-Cold War conflicts. A politically super-charged world order was met with the concept of “non-alignment” in the aftermath of the Korean War, an idea that persisted even till the Cold War time. For India, the concept of non-alignment began as a policy of non-participation in the military affairs of the then highly-bipolar world. It meant a country should be able to preserve a certain amount of freedom of action internationally. The ripple effects of such a stance would not be recorded anywhere, would go unseen and unacknowledged and eventually get lost in the mists of time. But if this notion wasn’t strong enough, the world wouldn’t have come to a stage where for once, it took a stop. It wasn’t until the last two decades of the century that many states took a break from choosing sides externally and shifted their focus on internal matters & development. Progressive trends like globalisation, cultural exchange, trade pacts, privatisation, technological breakthroughs, space exploration, decolonisation began to bring positive change across the globe.

This led to a much evolved and mature global setting and a highly inter-connected world order with trade, technology, peace and security acquired the center stage. The focus beautifully shifted to revival of economies, preservation of culture and establishment of healthy bilateral relations across the globe, slowly laying foundations of ‘multilateralism’ for collective growth and sustainability. And this is exactly what the New India has learned, understood, is applying and endorsing for the whole world to see.

Yesterday, further hitting out on Europe on being silent on many key issues including India and China and the rule-based order in Afghanistan, EAM has said, “Somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problem but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problem. Come on guys, India and China happened way before anything happened in Ukraine”. He reckoned that the “world cannot be that Eurocentric that it used to be in the past”.

Further, speaking of India’s wheat ban decision, EAM said, “Our goodwill was used for global speculation and we had to do something. What we saw happen with vaccines, we don’t want to see happen with wheat.”

“Low-income countries, many of whom are traditional buyers like our neighbours Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, interestingly the Gulf, buy from us regularly. Yemen buys from us, Sudan buys from us, what we saw was low-income buyers were squeezed out, wheat was actually being stocked for being traded, so our goodwill was being used for speculation. We have to do something to stop that because it was also affecting us as home prices were going up,” EAM added.

Further responding to a question on India was allowing “trans-shipment of oil”, EAM asserted, “There’s an enormous shortage of oil, there’s a physical shortage of oil, getting access to oil is difficult. A country like India would be crazy to get oil from somebody and sell it to somebody else. This is nonsense.”

The 21st century is all about trade, technology and resource management. Few years back, the entire world experienced the tremors of the bad impacts of the US-China trade tussle. This was followed by COVID-19 Pandemic and then the Ukraine-Russia Crisis. These instances are clear indication that any deviation from the Path of ‘Sustainability, growth and Peace’ is going to lead the world towards damage and disruption. And this is exactly the message India has been trying to convey to the world and this is clear in the kind of global initiatives it has been taking up, in the kind of global collaborations and multilateral agreements it has been engaging in and in the kind of support and aid it has been extending to the world since the last 7-8 years. India understands the reality, potential and practicality of the century well and hence strongly stands for mutual respect.

Indo-African relationship has historic importance and is set to define future for majority of world’s population. Dating back several centuries, the relations between India and African countries are driven and shaped by a number of factors, including trade and investments, cultural, historical and political engagements. A youthful demography, fast growing economies and vast amount of natural resources are something that both sides enjoy, causing envy and interest in rest of the world. Ongoing visit by the Vice President is the first-ever high level visit from India to Gabon and Senegal. This visit is set to add momentum to India’s engagement with Africa and emphasize India’s commitment to this continent as Africa is increasingly becoming important to India’s foreign policy calculations also.

Not only India, but rest of the globe is also far more interested in the African continent today than any time in history. India and Africa’s historical links and relations have experienced a revival in recent years and both sides understand the fact that it is a win-win situation as growing relations are mutually beneficial. India-Africa trade has grown to around 66.7 billion US dollar in 2019-20. Around 8% of Indian imports are from Africa and around 9% of Africa’s imports are from India. The investment of India’s public and private sector enterprises are increasing in Africa, making it the 8th largest investor in African. Besides loan and investment, India has also given ample amount of aid to Africa to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Under the Vaccine Maitri initiative, India supplied 24.7 million doses of Made of India Covid vaccines to 42 countries in Africa.

India’s engagement with Africa focuses much on its core competencies like human resource development, training and skill development, IT, ITES, education and healthcare services which are very different to the Chinese approach, which focuses majorly on developing manufacturing capacities and infrastructure in Africa. While, China’s economic model of engagement with Africa looks attractive and has also paid rich dividend in recent years, the fascination for India’s support for democratic practices, processes, institutions and people to people engagement is high in Africa. India also has an advantage of language and cultural affinity. English is far more prevalent among the people in African countries than any other language, making it much easier for Indian to interact with African people. Moreover, over 3 million strong Indian diaspora in Africa also proves to a crucial strategic asset for India to further its relations with African countries.

Over half a dozen countries in Africa are among the fastest developing economies including Rwanda, Senegal, and Tanzania, making it one of the growth pole of the world. Real GDP in Africa in the past decade has grown almost twice. African continent has a population of over one billion with a combined GDP of 2.5 trillion dollars, which makes it a huge market. Taking these all things into account, India is making consistent efforts towards strengthening relations with Africa. India’s duty-free tariff preferential scheme has been beneficial for Least Developed African Nations. The India–Africa Forum Summit- the official platform for the African-Indian relations, is also contributing immensely to this building up the relationship process.