Mumbai: The outlook of Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) is important for the world as it is not about protectionism, but building greater strengths at home to play more effectively abroad, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said.
Jaishankar, referring to the Covid-19, said people are in the midst of the most catastrophic global event since World War II.
One of its consequences will be that those living in extreme poverty will increase for the first time in a quarter century. But there are other results as well, among them how countries perceive national security and global trade so much more differently than before, he said. The additional stresses on the global system will surely aggravate its already difficult predicament, he added.
We may be interacting in a hybrid mode, but in many ways, do so in a hybrid world. The old, the emerging and the ‘over the horizon’ co-exist and it is reading them right to draw policy conclusions that will be the real challenge that we will all face, Jaishankar said.
More countries count today than they did before; and naturally, we have moved from G-7 to G-20. But we also need to assign different weightages to different players; it’s not just the US and China but others including India, he said.
