1. SHASHI THAROOR (THIRUVANANTHAPURAM): Mr. Deputy-Speaker, Sir, I thank you for giving me this opportunity to respond on the occasion of the Debate on the Demands for Grants of the Ministry of External Affairs.

          Before entering into the substance, may I also associate myself with the concerns expressed, at the beginning of the intervention, by the hon. Member, our distinguished former Foreign Minister, particularly about the tragedy in Japan, where, I am sure, all of us in this House share his concerns and lament the terrible catastrophe unfolding in that country as well as  his reference to the loss of life suffered by two of our distinguished Ambassadors Shri Arif Mohammad Khan in Rome and Shri Raminder Jassal in Turkey. I knew them well. They were  contemporaries of mine in  Delhi University. I remember debating extensively with Shri Jassal. This is a great loss to our nation, of two fine diplomats and public servants. So I do want to associate, I think on behalf of those on this side of the House, with the concerns that Shri Jaswant Singh expressed. They are  our concerns as well.

          I would now like to turn to the substance of the issue before us. If I may say so, it is not a un-reconstructed internationalist that I would like to address this matter but rather as a Member of Parliament from Tiruvananthapuram, my constituency; which despite being the Capital of Kerala is still two-thirds a rural constituency, and as a Member of Parliament, like everyone else in this House, facing the domestic realities of our country. If I may say so, when Shri Jaswant Singh speaks of the conceptual challenges facing the Ministry, I think, the first conceptual challenge that we might all need to address is the answer to the very simple question: Why do we have a foreign policy? 

Clearly, it is there to promote the security and well-being of the Indian people. But, in most specific terms, we must have a policy that facilitates the domestic transformation of India at tts extraordinary time when we are attempting our development in this globalised and inter-dependent world. We are facing the extra-ordinary challenge of pulling our people out of poverty and growing our economy, growing India to be the kind of the country that I think all of us in this House would wish to see. We must do this through our engagement with the world. We clearly need our Government, our leaders, to create a global environment that is supportive of our domestic needs. This is why, it seems to me that we have had a long-standing concern in the Ministry of External Affairs with the strategic autonomy of the Government of Indi, the right to make its own decisions. When world leaders say: “Are you with us or against us”, we simply tell them “Yes. We are with you when we agree with you, we are against you when we disagree with you.” That strategic autonomy is fundamental to our conduct of world affairs because we are interested principally in what benefits us and our own people.

          Our relations with the major powers must reflect this. Indeed,  we have to, in this particular economic context facing our country, have good relations with those countries which are important sources of trade and investment into our economy. We must have good relations with countries that are indispensable for our energy security. We must have good relations with countries that could be – if they are already not – important sources of food and water. This is why, it seems to me that we when we are looking at the big countries in the world and the important regions of the world, we can see an immediate domestic connection. When we look at the United States, for example, how can we overlook the importance of the civil- nuclear agreement as an important one to our energy security? When we look at China – I  will come back to it in response to what the hon. Member said – how can we overlook the fact that this country, with which we fought a war less than five decades ago, is now our largest single trading partner?  When we look at the Gulf and the turmoil in the Arab World – which I shall turn to later - how can we ignore the fact that they are collectively responsible for over 70 per cent of this country’s energy security in oil and gas? When we look at other parts of the world, we have to worry about where our food comes from which our growing middle class in this country demands better nutrition and more food more than we can grow on our soil. 

          We will have to look at our neighbours for sources of water and ensure that our country conducts skilful diplomacy to ensure that those sources of water are not interrupted.

          Our links with the world, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me, are a vital factor in explaining our highest ever growth rates in the last couple of decades. If we did not have a Foreign Policy in the last few years that attended to these concerns, we would not be able to boast today of the kinds of percentages of growth that this House is so rightly proud of.

          But even if our purposes are clear, Mr. Chairman, our relations with each of these countries are more complex and they have to go beyond a strictly narrow interpretation of our interests. After all, other countries have interests too. There has to be a certain bargaining, a certain give and take and, of course, we know the importance in our own daily lives of making friends before we need them and to cultivate friendship with key countries before we actually do need to cash in those chips is also an important aspect of our international responsibilities.

          So, for the hon. Member to suggest that it is the US that makes policy in this country, I think, is most unfortunate. The fact that we maintain good relations with a country which still is the world’s sole Super Power, though it is an adjective that it is in danger of losing very soon, is something we ought to be proud of.  That a country of such importance in the world values its own relationship with India is something that, it seems to me, we should accept on our terms and we are doing so.

          Sir, the hon. Member quoted extensively from WikiLeaks which are, essentially, conversations involving American Ambassadors reporting to their Capital. He knows, after his distinguished tenure in the Ministry, that there are grave limitations to such documents as sources. First of all, they represent one side of the reporting. Secondly, they are out of context; they may not even represent the totality of the inputs available to the policy makers who receive these cables. Thirdly, they omit the other complementary inputs from the sources they are citing. For example, if a US Ambassador cites a conversation with an Indian official, he is, nonetheless, also failing to report the views of other Indian officials conveyed to other US officials. So, with greatest of respect, I would suggest to the hon. member that he give less importance to a collection of leaked cables, selective and limited as they are.

          But to remain at the conceptual stage for a little while, since the hon. Member took us through his conceptual concerns, we live, Mr. Chairman, in a world of a couple of significant paradoxes. The first is that we are living in a world where the forces of globalisation have pulled all of us together much more intimately than ever before and, at the same time, the forces of violence and terrorism are pulling us apart more than ever before. So, the twin forces of disruption and convergence are part of the reality within which our Government must navigate.

          In addition, we are witnessing a significant change. With the end of the Cold War and with the end of the bipolar world in which the United States and the Soviet Union divided the globe amongst themselves and conducted a Super Power stand off, that gave way to about two decades of a unipolar world where, essentially, the only Super Power on the globe that mattered was the United States,

now we may be witnessing a transformation of that too to an increasingly multipolar world. We are not there yet. So far, the rise of China is the most significant factor. But some of us are not far behind. India, Brazil, Russia and other countries like South Africa, perhaps, will soon be reckoned with as States who are poles in their on right, at least in their own regions, if not in the global scale.

          History tells us, and I know that the hon. Member is particularly well versed in the history of strategic doctrines, that emerging multipolar systems are likely to be more unstable than  bipolar or even unipolar systems. And a great challenge for our Ministry, particularly since we are one of the rising powers and that others may not be so keen on seeing us rise, is to navigate our way through the shoals of this transformation in a way that is attentive of the needs of our country.

India’s role in the world is changing.  It is changing visibly and measurably since the days when the fundamentals of our foreign policy were laid down.  On that, I think, I have no disagreement with the hon. Member.

          Our new economic profile is a significant factor in that change.  Our more dispersed interests, it is clear that our interests are far more widespread around the globe then they have been for some time.  The expectations of other countries which are looking to us; increasingly there are small countries in our neighbourhood, but even as far away as Africa looking to us for support and even security.  There are big countries looking to us to  shoulder some of the burdens of international responsibility.   In adition, of course, there is a crying need on the global stage for leadership in the stewardship of the global commons.  All of these represent significant changes for India, but also significant opportunities for our country, which we must seize.

          Without necessarily abandoning Non-alignment, whatever be the historical circumstances from which that has emerged, we are increasingly complementing our Non-alignment with multi-alignment.  We are simultaneously active in the United Nations and the G-20, the universal body as well as, if you like, an elite body of the world’s largest economies. 

We are active in the Non-Aligned Movement and in the Conference of Democracies.  We are active in the South-Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as well as the Commonwealth.  We are part of the Russia-India-China RIC and  Brazil added to that BRIC, we now have IBSA, the India-Brazil-South African nexus and in Copenhagen, a year ago, we saw the emergence of BASIC.  What is interesting in all of these formulae that is the only country in common to all of them is India.  We stand at the fulcrum of all of these transformations. Indeed, even though, by no stretch of the imagination can we be considered an East-Asian country, we have now been given a role at the East-Asian Summit as well. 

This speaks, it seems to me, Mr. Chairman, of a country whole foreign policy has been adept, has been flexible, has been adaptive to the new demands of the world order and which at the same time has been able to take on new responsibilities and new challenges in this way. 

We are now, I think, increasingly moving from a perhaps obsessive focus on our own strategic autonomy to exercising responsibility on the global stage; to believing that we are capable of contributing to the making of global rules and even one day of helping to enforce them.  That is a conceptual vision for our policy, for our place in the world, that is worthy of our country with the economic strength and the political aspirations that this House, I know, shares. 

As part of that process, Mr. Chairman, we have witnessed last year the election of India, a great triumph for the Ministry of External Affairs, as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council by a record margin of 187 votes out of 190 cast.  This margin, this victory, is a reflection of the respect with which India is held in the world.  Many other countries were elected at the same time, including some perhaps more powerful than us economically, and yet none of them received the votes we did.  Not only that, we have, at the beginning of this year, been elected to chair the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Committee, a recognition again of the expertise, the competence and the fair-mindedness we bring to this single minded pursuit that we all have to bring terrorism internationally to justice.

Mr. Chairman, mentioning the Security Council, we have to, of course, mention the progress being made by the Ministry in advocating reform of the Security Council.  We all acknowledge, I think, that this is a Council whose composition reflects the geo-political realities of 1945 and not of 2011.  We need to seek significant changes and those changes are being pushed forward by our colleagues in the Ministry of External Affairs with tremendous determination and gumption.  We have had a significant move away from the so-called Open Ended Working Group of the Security Council, which became a never-ending Working Group, Mr. Chairman. We have moved to the plenary of the General Assembly and India has been responsible for encouraging the facilitator incharge of that process, Afghanistan, to come up with a draft resolution, which can move the discussion forward in a tangible concrete direction.

I think we should be pleased with that.  We recognize, of course, that this is not going to be easy.  It will take time.  Security Council reform is like a malady in which all the doctors gather around the patient; they all agree on the diagnosis but they cannot agree on the prescription.  Even if we all agree that the diagnosis is that the patient needs to be cured, the prescription has to be something which, first of all, passes the United Nations General Assembly with a two-thirds vote; 128 countries out of 192 have to vote for it.  And then this has to be ratified by two-thirds of the members of the United Nations, by their Parliaments because ratification is a Parliamentary process including the Parliaments of all five present Permanent Members.  It means tnat you need a formula that is simultaneously acceptable to two-thirds of the world and is not unacceptable to the five big powers whose authority you are trying to dilute.  This is why, it has turned out to be so difficult, so elusive.  But I believe progress is being made, and we should encourage our Ministry of External Affairs to pursue this effort so that India rightly finds a place at the high table on international peace and security issues.  The same is true, I would argue, Mr. Chairman, for the so-called ‘Bretton Woods Institutions’, the World Bank, the IMF, where we have to play a significant role in shifting the weightage of the voting authority, the voting power given to the rich and developed countries moving it away towards the so-called transition economies and the developing world.  It is no longer possible to have a world in which these institutions exist as if they reflect the wishes of the rich countries to supervise the economic delinquency of the poor.  After the recent global financial crisis, it is very clear that perhaps the Western economies could do with some supervision by us as well.  The problems originated there and I think many of the countries that have survived the global economic crisis have been the countries of the developing world.  Perhaps there is a lesson that we can teach the rich countries in the process. 

          The roots of this international role that we seek to play go back to our moment of independence, go back to the famous ‘tryst with destiny’ speech of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru at the midnight moment when our country came into being.  It is because even while that historic moment was occurring while the flames, the fires of partition were blazing across the land, Nehruji in that speech talked about the importance of his dreams not only for India but for the world.  Because he said, and I quote from memory, that all the nations of the world are knit together indissolubly and that the problems of peace cannot be divided just as indeed the problems and the threats that the world represents cannot be separated from each other.  But it was typical of that great nationalist, and he was simultaneously an internationalist, that he spoke for an India which was responsible and conscious of its place in the world.  I think that legacy that he has left us is one that we must carry forward in the changed circumstances of today.  There is a need for a ‘system redesign’ of the world that he saw coming into being at the moment of India’s independence.  Global governance is a buzz  world that everyone talks about in the international system. For that global governance to be meaningful, India must play its due part in it. It is striking that the rest of the world clearly sees that because as you all know, last year we became perhaps the only country, I believe indeed the only country in the world the leaders of all five of the present Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council came visiting.  We had visits from the leaders of China, the US, Britain, France, and Russia all coming to our country, a reflection, it seems to me, of exactly how important we are to determining the future of the world.

          I was a bit disturbed when the hon. Member said that our neighbourhood is as disturbed as never before.  I would respectfully suggest that just three or four years ago, we could have said the neighbourhood was far more disturbed.  At that point, there was a civil war raging in Sri Lanka; Bangladesh had just been overcome by a military takeover which had put the elected politicians in Jail; the Maldives was in the throes of serious trouble against the long-term President with the principal dissident in jail; Nepal of course was just emerging from the Maoist insurrection. 

Bhutan was going through the convergence of a change from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy; Afghanistan was in the midst of civil war; and Pakistan has undergone the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.  All of these were the environment that confronted India in our very tough neighbourhood.  I would argue, Mr. Chairman, that if anything, the neighbourhood is much better for us today; there is a much more positive environment.  In Bangladesh we have seen the election of a democratic Government that is well disposed to India and that is cooperating with us.  In Sri Lanka, we have seen the end of the brutal civil war and the gradual restoration of political rights and process to the people, particularly the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, who must have an honoured place in that society.  In Maldives, the former dissident who was in jail has now been elected as the President of that country, and he has made it very clear that his priority is good relations with India.

          Yes, of the others that I listed, some countries are in the process of important change, but Bhutan has managed its change very well.   And on top of that, our contribution in developing the hydro electric capacity of Bhutan has paid wonderful dividends both for Bhutan and for ourselves.  We get electricity but Bhutan is able, as you know, Mr. Chairman, to have a considerable increase in its GDP.  The generation of electricity has now overtaken tourism as a single largest contributor to GDP of Bhutan.  I think, we get some credit for that in this country and to the Ministry of External Affairs.

          Nepal, I think, we all understand the importance of that issue, as the hon. Member has also put it.  It requires sustained effort, and I believe that this Ministry and this Government are capable of that sustained effort.  There is no question, however, that nobody in this country, nobody in this House is in any way for, what you call, the ‘Maoization’ of the Nepalese Army.  I think, it would be a straw man to suggest that somehow the policies of the Government of India or the Ministry of External Affairs would lead to that conclusion. It is very clear that it is not an outcome that we, in this country, would tolerate. 

          Afghanistan, of course, remains a huge challenge.  But Afghanistan is a challenge, again to which we have been rising, Mr. Chairman.  We have spent 1.2 billion US dollars, and that is our largest single economic assistance programme to any country in the world. We have budgeted up to two billion dollars for this struggling neighbour.  We have spent it usefully.  It has not been spent on military adventures.  It has been spent on such essential things as a road across south western Afghanistan that permits Afghanistan to trade directly with Iran, and not only through Pakistan.  It has been spent on constructing a 3,000 metres high electricity wire that actually transmits electricity from Uzbekistan to Kabul.  So, Kabul, today, has 24 hours, seven days of week electricity, thanks to Indian engineers. 

          It has been spent on reviving maternal and child health hospitals, in reconstructing girls schools, and today in the process of building the Afghan Parliament, which we all hope will be a symbol of Afghan democracy and of India’s determination to support the Afghan people in constructing their own future destiny.

          With all of that, I think, the alarm that has been expressed is unnecessary. I will come to Pakistan where, I think, we have very little, not yet said in this House, but which needs to be addressed.  But if I can just mention in passing that perhaps the best symbols of the progress being made in our immediate neighbourhood is not in any diplomatic effort per se though the Ministry is involved, but in two academic efforts; the creation of the South Asian University in Delhi which will be opened to students from across our sub-continent and the establishment of Nalanda University in Bihar which will revive a University that till the 8^th Century AD used to receive students from China, Japan, Korea.  Foreign countries used to send their students to India before Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard were even a gleam in anybody’s eye. By creating again, recreating Nalanda University we should be able to revive that moment and stand once again as a symbol of excellence in our own Region.

          But when we turn to Pakistan, Mr. Chairman, of course, that is an important concern.  Our hon. Member, former Foreign Minister mentioned it. We are living with a country which undoubtedly poses us significant challenges because of its own internal arrangements. In our country, in India, the State has an Army.  In Pakistan, the Army has a State.

          The fact is that in Pakistan, you do not join the Army to defend the country; you join the Army to run the country. You join the Army not only to serve in the Army but to do import-export, run petrol stations, run real estate developments  even head universities and think tanks, all are in the hands of Army officers.  There is a excessive domination of that country and that society by the military. There is a domination,  which is unparalleled in the world.  There is no Army anywhere in the world that has a larger share of its country’s GDP or its Government’s regular Budget than the Pakistani Army. 

         So, to justify such an unnatural and disproportionate degree of influence, Pakistan needs unfortunately an enemy – preferably two enemies -- one on either side; but if not, certainly an enemy in us.  This is something that none of us, I believe, on either side of this House, will want to discount or diminish.  We cannot  forget  our history and we can certainly not ignore our geography.  Pakistan is next door to us and the reality of Pakistan is as tangible as a thorn pierced into our flesh. But having said that, I must disagree with the hon. Member on his questioning the Ministry  on the Thimphu spirit and the decision to talk.  Not talking,  quite simply, is  not a policy. 

          Immediately after the horrors of 26/11, the attack on Mumbai, it made sense to show our deep  disapproval and dismay at the failure of the elected civilian Government of that country to control the terrorists, who came to our country to wreak such havoc. It was right, at that point, to suspend the  talks and indeed, to use the suspension of talks, as the source of leverage, including by pressing others, the paymasters of Pakistan, friends of Pakistan, to use their own diplomatic leverage to get Pakistan to conform with the expectations of India.  I might say that it had a significant initial impact, because I have no doubt that India’s outrage and the sympathy for India on the part of the other countries, definitely contributed to some of the initial moves in Pakistan.  The arrest of  Zakir ur Rahman Lakhvi and six of his co-conspirators was certainly a result of this pressure.

          But now, Mr. Chairman, the policy of not talking has stopped delivering results.  The era of diminishing returns has long since set in.  In fact, if anything, it gives us an illusion of leverage, which masks  the dangerous reality, that our not talking, no longer gives us any leverage.  I think it is extremely important that we recognise that by refusing to talk to our next door neighbour, while it professes its willingness to talk and cooperate with us, merely gives us the appearance of intransigence and unaccommodativeness   in the eyes of the rest of the world, without giving us any tangible benefits in return.

          So, I strongly support the Ministry and the Prime Minister in their efforts to resume this dialogue.  It is not talking that is the problem; it is what we talk and when we talk that matters.  There, I hope that our Ministry of External Affairs will take a strong line on these issues that are not negotiable, of our nation’s security and its honour, that we will demand of Pakistan better behaviour in terms of curbing the activities of those on its soil who wish to do India harm that it will demand compliance from Pakistan with the United Nations Security Council Resolutions, which forbid, for example, the passage of terrorists or actions to fund the terrorist, to arm the terrorists, but also prohibit incitement.  What is Mr. Hafiz Saeed doing in Pakistan if he is not inciting people to commit acts of terrorism against India?   I certainly hope that our Ministry will proceed to stand up in these talks for the great necessity of compliance with these Resolutions and with the expectations of the International Community as well as ourselves.

          We are fundamentally, Mr. Chairman, a status quo power.  We wish to be allowed to get on with our development. We do not wish to engage in military adventures.  I would say with great respect to the hon. Member, who just spoke, that intransigence or the path of confrontation will not get us anywhere that we need to go.  Our principal obligation, going back to what I began with, is the domestic transformation of our country, the development of our country, pulling our people out of poverty; and we can do that best through maintaining a peaceful environment and through talking as long as people are prepared to talk.

          Of course, I would agree with the hon. Member when he said that Pakistan is skating on a this ice. But when Pakistan is skating on a thin ice, should we break a hole in that ice or should we actually help it skate off the ice? Should we, in fact, continue with our approaches of making asymmetrical gestures across the Sub-Continent? You all know many years ago--and it was not the UPA Government that did this--but a Government of the so-called United Front that offered a Most Favoured Nation trading status to Pakistan which to this day has not been reciprocated but it has been maintained by the NDA Government; it has been maintained by the UPA Government, and it is a gesture of magnanimity on India’s part, which I think, therefore, can be said, to have the blessing of all sections of this House. That is a sort of policy that successive Governments have supported, stretching out the hand of friendship to Pakistan, not because Pakistan is of worthy of it but because it is important for us to be worthy of ourselves.

          Let me turn to China since the hon. Member did have a few things to say about that. I would like to recall his phrase, “Let us recognise the reality of China.”  And I am very, very deeply respectful of his own service in the tragic 1962 war as a soldier fighting for our country’s honour. But I must say that the reality of China of 2011 is not the reality of 1962. The fact is that today’s China is a country with which we have had 51 billion dollars of trade in the last fiscal year. By the end of this month, the figure might be 60 billion dollars for this fiscal year, and the Prime Minister of China has come here and spoken of 100 billion dollars by 2015. We are talking about a China where we have 7000 Indian students studying now. We did not have any in 1962. We are talking of a China which has been permitting our pilgrims to travel to Kailash and Mansarovar. We have been talking of a China which has allowed Indian companies to open branches in Shanghai and Huangztiou and indeed Chinese companies are trying to come into India, do projects, do important work in our power sector and indeed offer consumer goods as well.

So, all of this is happening from China and I think that is the reality that we should focus on. That does not mean we are being complacent. We are conscious that we have the world’s longest unresolved frontier dispute with China. It is extremely important that we will be attentive to the occasional noises of belligerence being uttered by the Chinese on Arunachal Pradesh. But India and this Ministry, it seems to me, have been extremely strong in standing up for India’s rights.

          Our Prime Minister has visited and campaigned in Arunachal Pradesh. The Dalai Lama, despite Chinese warnings, was able and allowed to go to Arunachal Pradesh and speak there, and of course, India has at no point compromised. I certainly hope that our hon. Minister of External Affairs will make a visit to Arunachal Pradesh before long to send a very clear signal that this territory is India’s and will not, in fact, be negotiable.

          But having said that, as long as our defence preparedness is adequate, China has far too much a stake in its economic relationship with India to be tempted to engage in any sort of military adventure. I do not think we should fear China. Mr. Chairman, I think we should be confident and strong and look the Chinese in the eye and say, come and enjoy our market as long as you do not misbehave when our direct interests are affected on the border.

          We should speak, of course, beyond China. Of the rest of East Asia, there is not much to say, except that our relations are excellent. I mentioned the East Asian Summit already, but one more domestic fact, since I keep talking about the domestic connection, is that our Look-East Policy will also help the development of our North Eastern States, a part of our country, which sadly has been, in many ways, left behind in India’s dramatic story of development. The North-Eastern States will benefit if we can have road, rail and river connectivity through Myanmar into the rest of South East Asia and to ASEAN, and we must, therefore, see the benefits of that.

          The hon. Member mentioned the Arab turmoil. Very simply, Mr. Chairman, this is the result of four factors. First, you do have in the Arab world longlasting regimes with no possibility of change and no possibility of expression of another view. Mr. Gadhafi has been in power for four decades, Mr. Mubarak, for nearly three decades, the former Tunisian leader, Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali, for over two decades and in those circumstances, the lack of an outlet inevitably brought matters boiling to a head. Secondly, there was a demographic bulge. There is a large population of young men who have grown up in these countries not knowing any other rulers.

They are victims of the third factor which is economic failure. The unemployment of young men in a country with no prospective political change has led us to the situation in which the fourth factor came into play and that is the information revolution. Not just Facebook and Twitter as our western media has been saying, but rather satellite television – Al Jazeera showing in one country what is happening in another country – mobile telephones which can be used to organise people getting together to protest, all of this have brought the situation to a head. What is India’s interest in this? Very clearly these are countries with which we have had important relations, but none of the three situations has significantly affected us, with the exception, of course, to some degree, of Libya which is a major source of our energy security.

Rather, if you look to the Arab world as a whole and particularly to the countries of the Gulf, there are three things of concern to us. The first is our energy security. We need oil and gas. The second is, as a potential source of investment many countries of the Gulf have an investible surplus which we would like to attract to our challenges of development in this country. But, third is the presence of our Indians there. Overseas Indians are a legitimate responsibility of our Government. We have large numbers of Indians in the Gulf countries. Fortunately, so far none has been seriously affected. Of course, in Bahrain we must monitor the situation very carefully and I am sure the Ministry is doing so. But in Libya what we saw when Indians were affected was a Herculean and extremely effective effort by the Ministry of External Affairs to evacuate our Indian nationals from that country. I think we should congratulate the Ministry for what has been done – the Ambassadors on the ground, the coordinators here in New Delhi and those who made the policy and executed, the cooperation of other Ministries including the Navy in the Defence Ministry – all of this speaks very well of our sense of responsibility for the wellbeing of our citizens in foreign lands. I do want to commend our Government and our concerns for the well being of Indians elsewhere. Should the problem spread elsewhere in the Arab world, I am sure we will be seriously attentive to the needs of our citizens.

Iran was mentioned by the hon. Member. I again must object to the terms in which he did so. Yes, we have a wonderful civilizational relationship with Iran. But that does not mean that we have to agree with everything that Iran does. Nor does it mean that if we take a position of principle that it is somehow at the behest of some other third power. There is no question that it is not in India’s interest to see new nuclear powers in our neighbourhood. India as a country that has traditionally stood for values of international law and for honouring every word of a treaty is fully justified to vote against Iran if Iran is in blatant violation of its own solemn signed commitments to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s requirements with regard to its nuclear programme. If Iran violated it and India said you are wrong, as a responsible member of the Board of Governors of IAEA, India, I believe, did the right thing. I think the hon. Member does us a disservice in saying this is done at the behest of any other country. I believe India acts in its own interest and in this case our own interest in unambiguous.

I do want to mention a couple of places that the hon. Member did not mention. Africa very clearly is extremely important to our country. We have long had solidarity with the countries of Africa. We are in a couple of months’ time going to have the Second India Africa Forum Summit in Ethiopia. We have been making a significant contribution to some things that perhaps we do not know about in this House, like the Pan-African e-network. Indian satellites are connecting more than 40 African countries by e-mail, by satellite connectivity and by telephone. It is an extraordinary contribution that is deeply appreciated by the African countries. This explains why in the Demands for Grants we can see that 36 per cent of the MEA’s budget is actually destined to technical cooperation. We are extending an arm of friendship. We are doing so at very generous concessional rates. We cannot match China in terms of grants. But we can give concessional loans and it is right that we should do that and give our assistance to countries which in many ways look at us with admiration. 

It is certainly true that China is a bigger player in Africa. It is certainly true that the West has been a bigger player in Africa. But when African leaders look at those countries, they do so with a certain degree of distance and awe. When they look at us they see a country that is familiar to them. They see India as a country not unlike Africa, not unlike the experience of those African countries and yet we have succeeded where they have not in overcoming some of these problems. So, they are very anxious to cooperate with us as they feel if India can do it, may be so can we do it.

There is a tremendous cultural affinity. I cannot tell you the number of African leaders from my UN days to the present -- the Prime Ministers, the Foreign Ministers and the Presidents -- who have told me of their joy as children growing up in Africa and looking forward to the arrival of Bollywood films to their nearest town. This too is part of the cultural impact of India.

We must speak of the soft power of India in this context. The fact that our films are not just going to the diaspora of Indians in the UK or US, but they are also going to the screens of Arabs, Africans, Syrians and Senegalese. I would like to tell this House about a Senegalese gentleman I met in New York who told me that his illiterate mother takes a bus once a month every month to the capital city of Dakar just to watch a Hindi film. She cannot understand Hindi. She is illiterate, so she cannot read the French sub-titles, but she sees the film. Our films, as you know, are made to be understood despite such handicaps, and she enjoys the song, dance and action. The result is that she leaves with stars in her eyes about India. In fact, I was told by an Indian diplomat posted in Syria some years ago that the only posters there that were as large as those of the then President Hafez al-Assad anywhere displayed in Damascus were those of Amitabh Bachchan. We have, in our country, assets that we give insufficient respect to, but which are also parts of our foreign policy.

I think that it is extremely important to recognize, for example, that in Afghanistan our biggest asset was never military. We never had a significant military presence other than a few soldiers to protect our road crews.  Until last year, you could never call an Afghan at 8.30 in the evening. Why was it so? It was because that was the time when the Indian soap opera ‘Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’ dubbed into Dari was being telecast in Afghanistan and everyone wanted to watch it. It is because in a conservative Islamic society where family problems are often literally hidden behind the veil, an Indian television show offered the one opportunity they had to discuss family issues. It became so popular that there were actually reports of official functions being missed by people watching the show at 8.30, and wedding banquets being interrupted so that people could gather around the television sets rather than pay attention to the bride and groom. And the Mullahs were objecting to the contents of these shows. But what was striking was that even crime went up at 8.30 because apparently the watchmen were busy watching the TV rather than minding the store. Now, this is the impact of India in Afghanistan.

We have impacted in other ways through our culture, Yoga, Ayurveda. We can talk very very simply about our cuisine, which is spread around the world. There is no corner of the globe today where you cannot find an Indian restaurant. Indeed, in Britain, today, Indian restaurants employ more people than the coal mines, ship building and iron and steel industries combined. So, the British Foreign Secretary could actually declare that the national dish of Britain is Chicken Tikka Masala.

Now, the fact is that all of this may not be directly due to the efforts of the Ministry of External Affairs, but they are part of the soft power of India; the cultural diplomacy that the Ministry through ICCR supports.  And part of that is the values of our country, our democracy, our management of diversity, and the principles laid down to us from the days of Gandhiji and Nehruji.

Let me take an example. Before I entered politics, when I was at the UN, I was travelling in the Gulf countries at the time of the elections of 2004 and people were astonished that here in India we had an election being won by a woman political leader of Roman Catholic background who then made way for a Sikh gentleman to be sworn in as the Prime Minister by a Muslim President in a country 80 per cent Hindu. This is India, and this stands us great stead in the world. We are respected for reflecting the management of diversity rather than descending into conflict within our own society. All of this is important.

The side that prevails in the world today or the world of tomorrow will not always be the side with the bigger army. It will be the side that tells the better story, and India must be the land that tells a better story to the world.

I would agree with the hon. Member who spoke that our soft power needs hard power as well to back it, and I think that it is extremely important that our diplomacy should be supported by an extremely efficient and effective security apparatus and a strong defence policy. But for the distinguished former Foreign Minister to put up a straw man by referring to the prospect of foreign troops coming into India, I think, is really beyond the pale and I would respectfully suggest that he withdraw that thought. Nobody in this Government and nobody in this Ministry would, I am sure, take any steps that would result in the arrival of foreign troops on the Indian soil.

          Having said that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to bring this to a close by simply saying that we must be aware, in this increasingly globalizing world, that our security, our future, depends not only on our troops or our national security efforts, they depend on our foreign policy, and they depend on the effectiveness of the Ministry of External Affairs.  Even our jobs here are made possible because of licences and access from foreign countries and foreign markets. Our jobs are made possible because of an effective international system maintained through our effective diplomacy and through our effective foreign policy. Our country, in this globalizing world, cannot afford to be indifferent to the rest of the world, cannot afford to neglect our neighbours, and I would agree with the distinguished former Foreign Minister that our neighbourhood is far more than just the immediate countries of South Asia. We must have productive relations focussed on our national interest with all these countries. I believe the Ministry is doing a very good job of that.

I would add, however, that all of us in this House support the need for far more personnel in the Ministry of External Affairs. I think we need more Ambassadors, more Diplomats, more professional officers, more translators, more people with language skills, and we definitely need to have, without any question, a possibility to admit mid-career people from other streams to participate in our foreign policy-making,  so that the Ministry of External Affairs can be fully worthy of a major global power of the Twenty-first century, which is what India will be.

          I would then conclude by returning to the yardstick which I had spoken, Mr. Chairman, at the beginning- that our foreign policy should be measured by our effectiveness in facilitating, through our international engagement, the domestic transformation of India. If our foreign policy, as I believe I have argued, does that, then I think we have every reason to congratulate the Ministry and, therefore, I commend to you its Demands for Grants for this fiscal year.