Transcription
Not just our politics, not just our strategy, not just our country position, not just our trade. We are actually in the midst of an enormous renegotiation.
What are your three takeaways from this dialogue? Look, the first takeaway would be perhaps more than any other dialogue till now, I can see, you know, on the faces and the behavior, in the radiation of everybody who comes here, this sense that there is a huge political change. Uh, or not, I, I, I pull back that word, political. There's a huge change happening. You know, change always happens, but somehow this year, that sense of it is so sharp, so overwhelming in a way. And my takeaway, which yesterday evening, you know, uh, we had a dinner where Samir was there, and when he asked me to sum up the dinner, I share with you what my summary was. I said, today, all of us are renegotiating everything. Not just our politics, not just our strategy, not just our country position, not just our trade. We are actually in the midst of an enormous renegotiation. And it's actually when you renegotiate so drastically that this term, the global order is changing, is for real. It is for real this time.
My second takeaway was on the tech side. Uh, many, many years ago, when I was approximately your age, and I was doing my PhD, uh, I focused on, uh, the impact of nuclear technology on, on politics, on diplomacy, on international relations because at that point of time, we are now talking mid-70s. Yeah. At that point of time, I was understandably led to believe that there's going to be nothing as big as nuclear technology when it comes to changing the world. I mean, this is the ultimate. I mean, this is like, to that, the term didn't exist then, this was like an end of history kind of change. Today, when I look at the potential implications of AI, nuclear technology is a walk in the park, you know. So, because nuclear technology, at the end of the day, impacted power balances, it impacted, well, to some extent, energy. Uh, it impacted who was up, who was down. It did not impact our daily lives. It did not impact the way we think, we behave, we relate, uh, we project. So I can tell you, you know, when I think of Raisina at 15, I can't even imagine it. I mean, that's how big a change, uh, I would say.
And the third, I still came away with that feeling. My third takeaway was, look, at the end of the day, we are a diverse world. I mean, I see the diversity in front of me. We are, you know, we are, yes, we are all inhabitants of the planet, but we have our history, we have a culture, we have a language, we have our faith. It's important to recognize that, you know, if you sort of erase it or you level it in a way, it's almost disrespectful of everything that human history has achieved. So for me, the, the diversity of the world today, the, the technology, the, you know, the cusp at which we stand today, and that enormous sense of change. Those would be my three takeaways.
And three things that surprised you or perplexed you at the dialogue? Could be a panel, could be an incident, could be someone just walking up to you. Well, uh, look, I attended some panels. I was meeting all my counterparts, I mean, other ministers and, you know, senior people journey here. It's only reasonable that you spend time with them. So I probably didn't attend as many panels as, uh, uh, many of you would have done. Um, so if you're asking me, okay, uh, which speaker or, you know, what was the most, I won't say unexpected, but, you know, normal, huh? >> Surprising. >> You know, to watch a Japanese speaker being so immensely provocative, that was surprising. I think most of you know which, which, uh, session you're talking about. >> Which session? I was talking about. And, you know, in a way, that's, that's the upside down world in which we are living. You know, uh, I, I had an interview recently with the Financial Times, and, uh, one of the thoughts which came to my, it was a freewheeling conversation, but one of the thoughts which came to my mind was, uh, I told the, after we had had our first masala dosa, that, you know, multipolar world used to be the Indian talking point. Today, it's the American talking point. We used to hear, you know, it's terrible to abstain on an important issue like Ukraine. I just saw a UN Security Council resolution, but the Americans and Russians voted together, and the Europeans, the Brits and the French abstained. >> So, you know, there, there could be others as well. I mean, uh, when, when I look back at our own history, you know, there was a time when the Western world used to think Indians are very preachy. I think today, we think it's the other way around. So we, we pride ourselves as the pragmatic, realistic people who get things done. So the world's not what it used to be.
So what are the three big changes? Look, I, I'm staying with three here, right? I would say change number one is, uh, the country, you know, the most, I mean, use whatever word you want to, most important country, but certainly quantitatively, qualitatively, the most influential country, the United States. When a country like the United States changes so profoundly, I think every, there is no part of the world which is not going to feel its impact and no domain or dimension which is going to be impervious, uh, to that change. So I think the change in America is a, is a very, very fundamental change. I mean, you may like it, you may not, that's a different matter, but we have to recognize that change has happened.
The second change to my mind is a much more gradual one, which is the relative weight of countries. Uh, you know, if you look at the world like a shareholding, >> the distribution of shares has changed, you know, over time. So if you were to draw up a practical list of, okay, which are the 20 most important countries, 80 years ago, after the Second World War, 60 years, 20 years after that, 20 more years after that, I think you can see actually that change happening every two decades, three, two decades, definitely you will see some ups and downs. >> That's more of a trend. And, you know, there's China, there's India, there are others. Uh, relatively speaking, uh, the, uh, the influence, uh, of the Western world has been balanced off, uh, by many others. So in that sense, we have today the makings of a multipolar world, or a much more diverse and and balanced world.
And to me, the third change is that, uh, there is actually a, a very intense backlash to globalization. Not the reality of supply chains which are transnational, but globalization as an ideological conviction and agenda where you can have, uh, private, you know, it's like if there can be private equity in ideology, >> a set of players say, we own the world, we are the masters of globalization, and we will tell you what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what is not, and we will decide the cultural correctness of this world. And I think today, you are seeing that backlash. Not, it's not just a backlash in America, it's not just, you know, a Brexit or, you know, left-wing, right-wing politics. I can tell you, as a person who travels, you know, to, to practically every continent across the world, I spend half my year out of the country. There's, there's that feeling is very pervasive in Africa and Latin America and the Pacific Islands that people want their identity, their diversity to be recognized. They, they don't think it's a flat world, and definite, because a flat world means somebody out there controls it. They don't like that.
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