 So, welcome everyone. My name is Faridh Danmari. I'm the Executive Officer of the South Asia Institute. Today we are proud to be hosting the book launch of Flying Blind India's Quest for Global Leadership by Muhammad Zeeshan, a foreign affairs columnist and also the Editor-in-Chief of Freedom Gazette. He has previously worked with the Indian delegation to the United Nations in New York with Kearney, the global consulting firm. As a consultant, Zeeshan has advised governments across the Middle East on the economic and political modernisation and helped a multilateral declaration on cybersecurity at the 2020 G20 summit in Riyadh. He was also involved in strategising India's historic election to the International Court of Justice in 2017. Zeeshan is currently a staff writer for the Diplomat and hosts a monthly Sunday column in the Deccan Herald titled The Z Factor. He has also written for The Washington Post, The Economist, The Telegraph, The Straight Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The South China Morning Post, among other international dailies. Zeeshan holds a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University where he edited the online edition of the Columbia Journal of International Affairs. Flying Blind India's Quest for Global Leadership takes an honest look at the performance of Indians foreign policy in terms of meeting the dreams and aspirations of a very globalised and young country. It deals with the key strategic questions facing Indian foreign policy in a multipolar world, including opportunities and threats. It also critically examines the traditional practice of foreign policy in India over the past many decades in terms of making India relevant and influential in world affairs. Finally, it identifies India's unexplored niche in global governance in the contents of the world's biggest international security challenges. I would like to ask our attendees, if you have any questions for Muhammad Zeeshan, please can you put them in the Q&A section and then we will explore them at the end of today's session. I would like to welcome Muhammad Zeeshan. Thank you Farid. Thank you so much for having me here. It's an absolute pleasure and honour to talk about my book and about India's foreign policy at a very interesting time of India's foreign policy historical practice, given that India is currently a non-permanent member of the Security Council, elected to serve a two-year term. And it has been a very, very hectic and eventful two-year term so far to say the least, starting with the crisis in Afghanistan and then of course, you know, the ongoing war in Ukraine and the pandemic behind everything else. And so I think that in many ways this is an interesting time to talk about India's foreign policy because very rarely has India's foreign policy been put under the spotlight, either in India's domestic discourse or in global discourse. But in the last few days it's been very interesting to me and to be honest, I've been a bit surprised as well to see the amount of debate and discussion that's been out there in the international media about India's foreign policy and India's abstentions in the UN Security Council and why is India not supporting its allies in the West? You know, why is it not voting against a very clear-cut case of unilateral aggression in Europe? What's going on and all of that? You know, this is very new I think to India. In some ways, India always wanted to have the global spotlight on its foreign policy, but now that it's shining bright on India's foreign policy, people in New Delhi have become somewhat rather uncomfortable with it to say the least. And so why is this happening? Why is it that India in some sense has to the rest of the world at least been punching below its weight? And in my book I write about several stats and facts to make the case for the argument that India is punching below its weight. India is of course a country full of aspiration and ambition on the world stage. It has been for a number of years now, the current Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi tends to talk about India as a jagat guru which in Sanskrit and Hindi means a leader of the world or a world guru. And yet at the same time, India has traditionally been very insular in its outlook to the world. And in the opening pages of my book, in the preface of the book, I talk about a comparison between Indian newspapers and foreign newspapers, particularly Western ones. And if you compare the amount of non-Indian news in an Indian newspaper, you'd find about half a page, one page at most maybe a page and a half during a crisis like the one in Ukraine, very rarely beyond that. But if you open the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal, you'll find pages and pages of non-US news. You know, about all parts of the world, not just the West, not just Europe but also Africa, Asia, parts of Asia that most people in Asia don't think about and so on. But in India you don't find this to be the case. And so as a result, what has happened is that in 2018 there was a very interesting survey conducted by Pew. I believe that there is a more recent survey that has been conducted by Pew, but I believe that the results are not out yet. But in this survey in 2018, Pew asked respondents in I think 27 countries, the question was, is India today as important, more important or less important in world affairs compared to 10 years ago? And in only one country did more than half the respondents say that India is now more important and that country was India. And what was more frustrating about that survey, I think at least to an Indian foreign policy analyst, was that the countries that were more skeptical about India or the countries where more people said that India was actually less important now were people in developing countries like Brazil and South Africa and Indonesia and the Philippines and so on. Now this to my mind should have been a bigger news story in India, but as far as I can remember in 2018 really nobody in the Indian media talked about this or debated it on prime time television or anything else. And that was very surprising because you know this was a very unique survey undertaken on the world stage internationally speaking about India's status as an emerging power. And we do talk all the time about India being a leader of the developing world and yet the result was in the developing world. Most people or many people felt that India was not really playing the kind of role that they saw India play 10 years prior which was in 2008. So why was this really happening and this I think the survey was kind of a starting point or trigger point if you will, to my research and study into India's quest for global leadership, which culminated in my book Flying Blind. I had been an Indian abroad for a number of years in a pride to that I was actually born Indian abroad, and then studied as an Indian abroad, and I was, and then of course I worked for a better brought as an Indian. And I was very struck by the fact that an Indian passport holder was not given really the same amount of travel freedom and opportunities that existed to an Australian citizen or an American citizen or a German citizen. And if you pull up the passport index which is compiled by Henley and partners over the last several years, you'll find that India is ranked abysmally low year after year on on the passport index which measures travel freedom which is the number of countries that, you know, a citizen of your country can go to without requiring a visa or at best an electronic visa. And on this index India tends to rank amazed, you know, well below the likes of China or Mexico or Brazil or South Africa are the developing countries around the world. And it ranks alongside countries such as Mongolia and Turkmenistan and Sierra Leone and others and I think you know the year that I wrote my, my book in late 2020. It was ranked below Sierra Leone on the passport index, which to most people will be quite shocking. And then you would find new stories of Indians being trapped around the world, most recently in Ukraine, where they were I think about 20,000 or Indian students studying medicine and other such courses in Ukraine, and India had to pull out all stops to evacuate them after the war had begun. That was a terribly, you know, recurrent story and frequent story in Indian foreign policy. You saw this happen in Yemen you saw this happen in Libya as well. There are Indians all around the world, and yet when you know conflict or crisis strikes that part of the world. India's government tends to not have much of a voice in what goes on, and Indian people end up paying the price. And from an Indian's point of view, I think the question really was, why is it that India despite its aspirations for global leadership is not really able to, you know, measure up. And I think to the rest of the world the question in my mind was what exactly does India's rise really mean, which is a question now there are a lot of people and in the international media are asking, given that the American crisis are going on in India as in the Security Council, why is India not voting for the West, why is India afraid to take a stance, and India tends not to take a stance on most issues there is no Indian policy on Yemen for instance. There is no Indian policy on the civil war in Ethiopia, there is no Indian policy on the civil war in Venezuela where there have been two competing presidents for a number of years now. And of course on Taiwan and other sensitive political matters India again tends to be well away and that best tends to sit on the fence for reasons that are not well articulated in Indian foreign policy. So the rest of the world tends to ask what are India's interest what is India going to do if India becomes a global superpower tomorrow, which in the eyes of many seems to be a logical conclusion to to India's foreign policy, given that India is a very large country significantly located in in the Asia Pacific with a very very young population, which is very likely to make up a significant chunk of the global workforce in the years to come. But when India started out as as an independent country as as I chart out the history of India's foreign policy in my book. I talk about the fact that India's first Prime Minister Pandit Javar Lal Nehru actually did have a foreign policy of purpose and his foreign policy was that India is born out of a an anti colonial movement for independence, fighting for freedom and self determination and human rights standing up against colonial exploitation and racism around the world and all of that. And this purpose of the Indian freedom movement was then borrowed or translated into India's foreign policy by Prime Minister Nehru, and India took a very vocal, very strong activists dance in several conflicted wars, the world, including in the Congo in in in the Indochina and Korea and so on countries where there was I think in in the Indian viewpoint at least a struggle between local freedom fighters and western exploitation as as Indian at the time. And so India gave it support for instance to the Congolese government, when it was fighting against rebels in the east that were backed by the West in during the Cold War. And similarly, India tended to give it support for the you know the Vietnamese fighters as well, not military support but but at least moral support. India tended to take a stance on on Palestine for instance where India felt that there was a case for the rights of self determination for the Palestinian people. And so during the Cold War, or for most part of the Cold War, at least under Prime Minister Nehru India tended to take a stand on political disputes all around the world. And the insistent in its principle and its principle was that we are going to stand up for self determination, we are going to stand up for people who are fighting against colonialism and against quote unquote western exploitation and so on. In some sense, I think derailed with the war with China in 1962, where India suffered tremendous losses and casualties, of course in the end China kind of withdrew, you know once winter set on for several reasons that continue to be debated to this day why China withdrew. That defeat to China in the military conflict of 1962. In some sense, I think, left a dent in India's strategic thinking in Delhi, where people start to believe that India had kind of overshot its its material capabilities India was of course at that point in time, a very poor country, heavily dependent on countries around the world for food aid and and other things. Famines were still a part of India's daily life in the 1960s and 50s. The military had been woefully exposed and brutally exposed by the Chinese PLA in 1962. And so India started to turn inwards starting from there on and then you know of course Prime Minister Nehru himself expired in 1964. The Prime Ministers who followed him particularly his daughter in the ragandi decided that she was going to take a very neighborhood centric foreign policy stand. She would not take a political stand on what's going on outside of India's neighborhood, because she had believed and in some sense had rightly believed that India did not have the material capabilities to play a proactive role outside of South Asia. So India played a very or rather pursued a very Machiavellian sort of neighborhood centric militaristic foreign policy if you will. Those were the years when India started its research into nuclear weapons in the 70s was the first nuclear weapons test. And then of course the inevitable sanctions followed with it. India started to kind of look inward increasingly and it was a phase of nation building in some sense. The military were underwent a lot of reform as well. There was of course the, you know the intersection of the emergency from 1975 to 77 which I write about in detail in my book. Which in some sense seemed to show to the rest of the world that India's experiment with democracy had finally come to an end. But then in 1977 for reasons yet debated. Prime Minister Andrew Gandhi decided to remove or you know, end the emergency period and then called elections in which she was merciful, mercilessly defeated and routed by the opposition parties. And then started in some sense India's further soul searching on how India can actually develop its economy. Because up until the late 80s early 90s, India's economy was still growing at best about two or 3% a year on average which for a country of that economic size and its population was very, very low. India's per capita income was extremely low and so starting out from a low base, while China and Korea and Taiwan and all these other countries in East Asia were taking off. India was still languishing in the lower, you know, regions of GDP growth. And so came in the early 90s forced or otherwise, you know, democratically forced or otherwise. The economic reform program, which opened up India's economy to the rest of the world. And alongside it India started to kind of feel its feet outside the waters of South Asia. And then the Look East program that was started in the early 90s by Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, which was an outreach to Southeast Asian countries or the Asian Tigers as we call them that were all growing very rapidly. So starting from the early 90s India started to liberalize its trade and overnight you started seeing Japanese cars on the Indian streets, American food chains at every street corner. You had of course the very fast influx of American IT and software firms that started outsourcing, you know, higher skilled jobs to Indian people. So overnight India's GDP growth started to take off with these reforms. And in my book I talk about some of the stats and figures that came out of this time. In 1988 India's trade weighed about 13 and a half percent of its GDP. 10 years later in 1998 with all of the liberalization and reform that had taken place. This trade had actually almost doubled to 24%. Services trade had more than doubled as a percentage of GDP. And not surprisingly, India's real GDP increased by as much as 70% in those 10 years between 1988 to 1998, which were the years of India's economic reform. So in many ways I think that if we look at what India's interests are I make the case in my book that India's interest started to come into shape and form during the 1990s, when India's economy finally started to take off. Before the 1990s, and really through most part of Prime Minister Nehru's term, and you know his daughter Indira Gandhi's term and beyond, India followed an import substitution approach to its economic growth model, which did not work at all. And it was quite frankly a very insular inward looking economy and society up until the liberalization reforms of the 90s. And what you saw happened with the 90s was an opening of India to the rest of the world, which also had tremendous cultural and social changes within and so now today you look at the number of people who speak English in India. There are more people who speak English in India than there are people who speak English in the United States, which to most people would come as a surprise and so in India in some sense has now become an English power in that sense of course as a percentage, the English speaking population in India is still quite small. But it is nonetheless a population, a percentage of the population that is growing every year, regardless of you know linguistic nationalism and things, the data shows that the percentage of people in India who speak English has been growing every year, and continues to grow every year quite steadily. And with that of course you had the influx of you know, Western made sitcoms, Western movies and Western music and all of the other things that follow wherever people speak English, Western food and cuisine as well. And so India became unlike East Asia in many ways, an amalgamation if you will of different cultures that's what Indian civilization has always been through the centuries. And when India opened up its economy in the early 1990s then invited in Western influences into its society and culture and eating habits and musical habits and and all of these other things. And that is I think in many ways what led to this convergence if you will between India and the United States in particular in the 2000s. So what really are India's interest in my book I argue that India's interests are, to be honest very Western in nature, because of the fact that India's economy is built on a very Western economic model. The distance unlike the Eastern Asian economies India's economic growth, you know depends very heavily on its services sector and so that is why you find that higher education is a very important thing for India English education is a very important thing for India. And so the chairman of the Indian space research organization for many years was actually the son of a farmer. And so you found that while many other countries in East Asia and elsewhere were sending people from the farm factory. Indians were actually sending farmers to the, you know, to the software firms to do programming and coding and all of these other things. And then eventually either to, you know, to Bangalore or countries cities like that within India, or to Silicon Valley straight away in California. India ended up with a very large diaspora the Indian diaspora is the largest diaspora in the world, and much of the Indian diaspora ended up being very politically active and influential, especially in the Democratic West. So in the West you would find in the United States for instance a number of governors and, and you know a number of Congress representatives are actually Indian origin. Kamala Harris the Vice President is Indian origin in New Zealand one of the major ministers I'm forgetting her name now but it is all in my book. One of the senior ministers in the New Zealand government was actually is actually of Indian origin for the first time in New Zealand's history. And actually it's very interesting to note that my grandfather or my late grandfather knew the aunt of the minister in question and so there is a little bit of a personal connection there as well that I learned about as I did research for this book. So the Indian diaspora became very politically influential, especially in the Democratic West. In my book I make the argument therefore that in so far as India's interests are concerned. The fact that India's diaspora becomes politically influential, and gets mobilized and more organized, and becomes really a tool of Indian foreign policy in many Democratic countries, that gives India a very, very big incentive really to stand up for democracy in human rights promotion around the world, much bigger strategic incentive than the United States would have, because wherever there is a democracy wherever human and freedom of expression is available, Indians in that country become politically active and influential and then become presidents and prime ministers, or members of parliament and and you know active influential politicians. And as a result, India in its own foreign policy practice has found that they are very, very useful tools of Indian foreign policy, because they stand up for what they see as Indian interest. And so you found that in the United States for instance during the nuclear deal, you know negotiations in the early 2000s. The roadblocks to the Indian US nuclear deal were actually in the Indian parliament, not so much in the US Congress, and a very large part of the reason for that was because the Indian American lobby in the US Congress and around Washington DC was standing up very vigorously for that nuclear deal, saying that you know the US has to look at India as a strategic ally. And similarly when Australia was thinking about removing its ban on uranium export to India remember that when the nuclear test had taken place in India there were sanctions from the West on India. Australia in in the mid to late 2000s started to think about removing this ban on uranium export to India. And at that point in time as well again the Indian diaspora in Australia became a very useful tool for Indian foreign policy to lobby the Australian government, and then finally succeeded actually in removing that ban on uranium export so many of these extraordinary successes unprecedented successes, especially in the nuclear proliferation in a field that India has caught came through the diaspora and so in my book I argue that the Indian diaspora gives India a very strong incentive to stand up for democracy promotion and human rights around the world. The other thing that I find as a result on on the economic side is that since globalization and create an openness and immigration and all of these things that created economic growth. The globalized world is very much in India's interest again. And so immigration is something that Indian foreign ministers across governments have really been taking up very aggressively and vocally with the US administration's over the years. Because of the fact that you know many of the Indians who are educated in India go and work in the US and send back billions and billions of dollars back to India in remittances, which are then you know, plowed ostensibly for state building and development purposes. And so globalization as a result gives India a very huge economic interest to stand up for these norms and principles on the world stage. These are some of the interests that I find a democratic liberal secular India faces in the world stage in global governance. Then of course in my book I go on to talk about the various challenges that India faces from South Asia from China from the United States in particular. What can India do to meet these opportunities and challenges around the world. I'm not going to go into detail into them people who want to read more about it can certainly read the book. But you know certainly I think that India today stands at a time when it does have a lot of the material limitations that we found in the 50s and 60s that held back prime minister narrow, or finally you know in the eyes of many led to the debacle of 1962. Many of those limitations have not gone away completely but they are significantly lesser. And so if India does wants to take a stand and play a bigger more proactive role and on the world stage. It certainly can do that it has said that it wants to do that the Indian Prime Minister not just the current one but even the previous one have spoken about it on the world stage. They have waxed eloquent about the fact that India has arrived and you know deserves to have a seat in the Security Council and all the decision making councils of the world. All that is left to do for India now is to say okay if he wants to be in the Security Council which we now offer two years. What are we going to do with that seat. What are we going to show the world about India's rise what are we going to show the world about an Indian world order. What can we stand up for, and what kind of action are we going to take. That is the challenge that now exists before the Narendra Modi government, you know, in its in its quest for global leadership in India's quest for global leadership, and we will wait and see where these coming years take us. And so with that very that I would like to stop my very long winded lecture and and allow the floor to be given to question and answers, including your own. And we can take it forward, I hope. Fantastic. I'd like to share a few questions with you before we explore the questions on the floor. So, Mohammed, why do you say that India's foreign policy has underperformed for a country of its size and significance. That's a good question that I think is not debated and discussed enough, you know, in India today. One reason as I pointed out early in my in my talk, was that Pew survey that came up in in 2018, which as I said, found that many people around the world were extremely skeptical about whether India was playing an important role and remember the question that was asked in that survey is very, very significant. The question was not, is India now a world power. The question was, is India now more important or as important or less important compared to 10 years ago. So it was relative to India's own performance in many ways, and the survey results were up that people thought that India was actually underperforming relative to its own performance in 2008. So I think in many ways to my mind was extremely alarming. The fact that relative to its own underperformers is something for 10 years prior in 2008, India was actually underperforming even further. And so now that to my mind, you know, leads to one of two possibilities one is that India was truly underperforming on an objective level compared to 2008. Or it was that the rest of the world kind of had very high expectations for what India would do in 2018, and relative to those expectations, India was actually under the delivery. I think that that it is very fair to say that the second, you know, possibility is a fair assessment as well. Because if you look at India today, India is a nuclear power state. India does have the second largest population in the world for better or worse, you know, you can say it's a demographic disaster, or a demographic dividend. But the fact of the matter is that the fact that a very large proportion of the world's future workforce resides in India, means that if India flies then it pulls the rest of the world along with it. But if India sinks the rest of the world also sinks along with it. And I think this is very important, especially in the context of China's own aging problems and, you know, slow down problems China has got debt troubles. China's economy has been slowing down for a number of years now. It's trying to restructure itself its population is aging, all of these things exist. And so for the last four decades, the global economy has grown because of China in many ways. But for the next four decades that's not going to be the case China is not going to be able to power really global economic growth in the same way. We already see the blowback of this in many ways in especially commodity exporting countries like Venezuela or Brazil, or Chile in Latin America, African countries like South Africa and others. Many of these countries that were exporting minerals and commodities to China for most part of the early 2000s and the 1990s. They have started to suffer tremendous, you know, economic strains, because demand for these commodities in China has actually fallen in the last as a result of its restructuring of the domestic economy, and it's quite rapid aging as well. The same thing happened in the 80s, in the 90s when Japan was aging and slowing as well. And so now we're seeing a repeat of that with China, when Japan aged and slow China picked up the slack. Even though China is aging and slowing, the only country really large enough to pick up the slack is India and so if India is not going to prosper, then that is going to be a massive problem for the rest of the world. And so I think from that angle as well. It's very fair for the rest of the world to say that we had expectations of India, India is not meeting that as yet. So what would you say are the key challenges holding back India's rise as a world power. Well, I think that, you know, despite the fact that India is a nuclear powered state and, you know, has a young population and all of that. The line between demographic dividend and demographic disaster is thinning at the moment and so, you know, with COVID-19 that's gotten much worse. Millions of people who are going to school are now come out of school they've been out of school for the last year and a half or two years. And so the gains that India had made in terms of developing its youth and you know making them employable and all of that. That is now starting to suffer already was suffering before the pandemic hit but now with the pandemic it is suffering even more. There's one excellent book that I'd like to recommend on this written by Akkar Patel, which is provocatively titled price of the Modi years. But, you know, it does capture India's performance on several global indices in the last, I think seven or eight years. And it shows across several socio economic indicators and so on how India has performed in the last seven to eight years with raw data that has been collected painstakingly by researchers across India and around the world. And it does paint a very bleak picture for the, you know, socio economic development that that India has been trying to undertake for the last 30 years, if you will, to create demographic dividend out of its out of its young population. So that's a massive, you know, pullback. I think the other challenge really is that India is, you know, a large fuel importer as well as a large arms importer. And that's never a very good combination to have together. If you look at the United States, for instance, it's always been very arm sufficient, but it was energy dependent on the Middle East, but the fact that it was militarily powerful or militarily present meant that in many ways it got a good deal from the Middle East on its oil import. But now that, you know, in the last few years, it has even managed to get rid of the energy dependence with becoming energy independent and now is actually one of the net exporters of energy in the world. And I think very soon it will become one of the largest exporters of oil and natural gas in the world, thanks to the shale oil revolution. So this is a problem that India has been trying to fix. It does have some mineral resources in the Northeast and in the West and so on, but the Northeast and Central India are extremely restrictive unstable regions. And so mining of these mineral resources has been, you know, stunted really for the last several years, and it has impacted India's ability to become more energy sufficient or energy self sufficient. And then of course arms imports are a major factor. People would be wondering and they've been discussing why India has not been criticizing Russia for Ukraine. And a large part of the reason for that is because more than half of India's military inventory comes from Russia. And so even though India has been trying to diversify away from Russia, you know Russia tends to still hold a very large stake in the Indian arms market, although that argument can cut both ways because as I write in my book as well. India is the largest arms importer in the world. And so, you know countries like Israel and Russia and others that are dependent on arms of exports to India and countries like India, you know, would also be dependent on India foreign policy for their own welfare and so if India is angry with Russia, and India decides that it's not going to import as many arms from Russia, that's going to hurt Russia just as much as people would think it would hurt India and India's national security as well, particularly at a time when sanctions are abundant on on the Russian economy from the West and continue to grow. The third I think very dire challenge really I would say that's facing India today is that a lot of its strengths are getting watered down. In my book I talk about what India strengths are as as an emerging power India strength really is that it is, it's a liberal secular democracy in the post colonial world with a very large diverse population, and that is unheard of. If you look at countries in Africa fence there have been about 200 or civil wars for the last 50 years, since Africa became independent. Latin America, some similarly has suffered revolutions and pools and and and you know, rebellions and civil wars of different kinds over many parts of Asia have suffered that as well into China has suffered it and in very large part Pakistan has suffered it and in very large part, but India has to doubt as a beacon of hope in many ways for the post colonial world, saying that okay here is a country that is poor that suffers developmental challenges that has a very large population which is very diverse with a huge you know religious minority and all of that stuff. And yet for the last 75 years has managed to make democracy work and constitutional democracy work. So in many ways, India's constitutional liberal secular democracy was, you know, a very large part of the Indian growth model, and a very large part of India soft power. When I talk about India's diaspora being a foreign policy tool, India's constitutional democracy is a very big part of that story. If India was not a constitutional democracy that took care of its diversity. You know that that was free of the kind of instability that has plagued other countries around the world. The Indian diaspora would not have been as efficient and effective a foreign policy tool for the Indian diaspora as it has been. I make that argument in comparison to China in particular I mean China has got a diaspora around the world. The Philippines has got a large diaspora around the world but China is probably a better reference point because China is a very large country. But the Chinese diaspora has not been as fond of the Chinese Communist Party, as the Indian diaspora has been fond of Indian democracy for the last many years. And so the reason for that is that the Chinese government, you know, with Channelman Square and all of these other controversial developments, sort of built a moat between itself and the Chinese diaspora in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s. That's now starting to change slowly. But then that's a different story for why the Chinese diaspora is now becoming better glued into, you know, the Chinese government. But the fact still remains that you can think about a Kamala Harris or a Bobby Jindal in America making the case for stronger ties with India. You can never think about a Chinese American politician in the United States making that kind of an argument, not just because China and the United States are, you know, on this on this geopolitical clash, but also because the Chinese American politician in the United States would not be as, you know, a fond of China's one party state as an American Indian American politician would be fond of Indian democracy. So democracy is a very, very large part of India's soft power. But in the last couple of years in particular you can find that this is being diluted India is in many ways, no longer really in my opinion the kind of democracy that it used to be. This is today for all practical purposes a majoritarian democracy, state institutions across the Indian Democratic setup are suffering for their independence and struggling for their independence they're suffering under, you know, the political push of majoritarianism and these conflicts that are emerging in India are very, very significant, not just for India stability and India's growth as a global power, but also for the stability and security I think for the rest of the world, because it's a country where you've got hundreds of millions of people who belong to minority communities. It is unparalleled and unheard of anywhere else in the world you will never find any country in the world that has a minority community the size of Brazil in its population and and numbers. And so I think that in many ways this is a very large challenge for India and for the world. Now we'll take some questions on the floor. Sophie has a question for you. As a tech professional working for an Indian integrator, I've been surprised by how many consular barriers there are still for foreigners to enter the country for business. Do you see this disconnect between the outward looking business sector, and a more inward looking government beginning to improve. And do you see any political parties offering any differentiation between themselves on this topic. That's a really good point. And I have to agree with Sophie that this is definitely a dichotomy. You know, you can even call it hypocrisy in many ways because Indian governments across the political spectrum have traditionally gone to the United States have gone to the to the European Union, and they've said you know you've got to loosen your visa laws you've got to loosen your trade laws and all of that allow our people to come in and work in your countries. But India is unwilling to do the same thing India kind of wants to have a one sided deal really with the West where the West opens up to to Indians but India will not open up to Western businesses and working professionals just as much. One argument that is made I think on this point is the fact that India has a very large population. It's much more densely packed in population than say the United States or many parts of Western Europe. And so as a result India says you know America can afford to take in a few million people India cannot afford to take in so many people. It's not an argument I would completely agree with but it is an argument that's made within Indian politics. If this issue comes up at all. But unfortunately I do have to say that this issue does not come up at all in Indian political discourse. It's not a point that people have taken up and I think it is a point that people should take up because you know as I pointed out globalization was a very big reason for India's economic transformation starting in the early 90s. And a large part of that was also you know this kind of you know exchange and interaction with the West and not just the West but also the rest of the world. And so you do want to have I think more people coming in from the rest of the world to India to do business bringing in their investment also studying and you know adding to the knowledge repository that exists in Indian universities. I can say from experience for instance I studied at Columbia and when you I've studied in India in an Indian university as well as in the West and when you compare the you know learning experience between Indian university and a Western university. I for one, you know, gained tremendously and I write about this in my book as well. I gained tremendously from the fact that I was at Columbia with Mexicans and Colombians and South Africans. And, you know, of course Indians and Americans and Australians and others, because these people brought in viewpoints and perspectives from around the world that I as an Indian had not been exposed to before I went to Columbia. And if you go to an Indian university, you will find of course the diversity of India within it, but you will not find the diversity of the world within it. I think there is a statistic that came out a few years ago that said that something like only 5% of professors at Indian universities come from outside of India. And that's a very unfortunate statistic I think you've got to try and build in more diversity and perspective, diversity of perspectives and cultures into your education system. That's the only real way I think to kind of inculcate or build a more innovative research culture in in your education system. And I think the same argument can certainly be made for the business sector. Thank you. We have a question from your comment on Indians foreign policy on its southern neighbor Sri Lanka would be interesting to hear historic times to where it is now. Yeah, that's that's something that I do write about in my book. I write about in my book in the context of how open South Asia used to be and how close South Asia has become today. Sri Lanka is a very interesting example of that because if you look at Sri Lanka Sri Lanka is an extraordinarily diverse country for you know a country that's at the far flung corner of South Asia and you know an island nation that's pretty much surrounded by water on all its sides. The only land link if you will to Sri Lanka is through Southern India. And that also from Tamil Nadu so you know the only way to feed Sri Lanka, if you're thinking about it geographically is is by sending tunnels into into Sri Lanka. But if you look at the way that the Sri Lankan population has developed over the centuries, you will find that it's actually genetically very diverse you have of course a very large Tamil population in the north. What's interesting about the single ease is that the single ease have got genetic and historical and cultural linkages to North India. And so what happened in Sri Lanka according to history and part of it legend and part of it recorded history is that there was a prince who came from Eastern India in Bengal migrated down to Sri Lanka. I think before before Christ I don't remember. I think it was second century BC. And I write about his story in my book. And along with this prince he was called Prince Vijaya. He, you know, a number of Indians started to migrate down to Sri Lanka as well. And then of course through the centuries there were Austro nations and other tribal people who also came to Sri Lanka by sea. There were Tamilians or Dravidians who came down from South India, South India into Sri Lanka. And so you've got Sri Lanka being this hodgepodge country over centuries because of how open and outward looking it was and South Asia as a whole was you know with this huge cultural and linguistic and over time also religious diversity. But you look at what's happening today between India and Sri Lanka. For the last many, many years India and Sri Lanka have been trying to sign this economic partnership agreement. It has been negotiated and then you know sent to parliament and then you know brought back to the negotiating table because it had to be watered down. There was a lot of protest. There's a lot of opposition within Sri Lanka to an economic partnership agreement with India. Protectionists were saying what are you doing? You know the Indian service sector is going to come in. The barbers will come in. The workers will come in. The software engineers and plumbers will come in. They're going to swarm in and take over Sri Lanka all of this kind of stuff. And so it was watered down and watered down and to this date continues to be negotiated between India and Sri Lanka. Every year the Sri Lankan Prime Minister says next year we're going to get it signed and it does not get signed. And then the next day it says the next year we will get it signed. It still does not get signed. They continue to negotiate. And a very large part of this I argue in my book is because there is a culture of mistrust really between not just India and Sri Lanka. In fact India and Sri Lanka in many ways is a slightly rosier story but between India and every other neighbour in the South Asian region there is a culture of mistrust that is built up over a period of time. For several reasons both strategic and cultural and historical and so on. I'm not just talking about India and Pakistan but as I said also India and Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh, India and Nepal and so on. And so it's very unfortunate to see that Sri Lanka, this country that had actually been built by migrants of fuel who came from the Indian mainland is today in some ways now a country with whom India is unable to sign an economic partnership agreement of a very basic nature. Thank you. We have a question from Sri. As you mentioned India's interests aligned with West, with the West. India is still seen bandwagoning USA. Unlike China we succumb to US sanctions on Iran, Venezuela or Russia when it comes to buy oil, compromising with national economic interests. How long do you think it will take India to adopt an independent foreign policy pursuing its core interests boldly. Well that's an interesting question because you know the phrase that's thrown about a lot in New Delhi is strategic autonomy or non alignment you know which which talks about the idea that India is an independent country it's for you know following an independent foreign policy. It's like where India abstained on Ukraine. One of the big reasons or arguments that was made in New Delhi was that or you know strategic autonomy we are not going to be bulldozed by the West and all of that sort of stuff. On the sanctions bit I think that's a little bit difficult because you know if there are sanctions on a country even China is kind of going to think twice before doing open business. You know of course buy oil from Iran and Venezuela, but a lot of that is kind of black market oil if you will it's brought in through underground means it's colored in in different ways it's sent in through Oman or Malaysia. And then it is important into China as Malaysian oil or Omani oil, rather than as Iranian and Venezuelan oil. So, China as well kind of including on on the issue of Russia I think we will see China will be kind of walking around egg shells because it does not want to attract sanctions from the West itself and so India in many ways will follow whatever sanctions are put by the West on Russia and these other countries, because India does not want to suffer. But at the same time you will find that the US has kind of given India a long rope I mean on Iran for instance that has been in the past, including under the Donald Trump administration that have been exceptions and waivers for India on Russia actually India has gotten waivers on sanctions, since the Crimea episode as well. Every time India wants a big shiny, you know, piece of weapon from Russia, India goes to Washington, and Washington says all right you can you can have it. I think that rope is kind of freeing now and Washington starting to lose its patience, but so far America has been saying that India is an important partner so let India do whatever it wants to do. Now the question I think for India is, what are its interests and so you know, India has not, I think defined as yet what its interests are. On Iran for instance, it's not clear, you know, from India's point of view whether India wants to say that we want to have sanctions on Iran to bring Iran back to the negotiating table, or let's go hard on Iran. There's no policy really from India on what should be done about Iran, whether India, whether Iran deserves a nuclear weapon or not. Now what's interesting about this is that India is not a signatory to the NPT the non proliferation treaty, because I write about this in my book, India believes that you know the NPT is a discriminatory treaty it's a reasonable treaty, India says that if five countries can have nuclear weapons everybody should be allowed to have nuclear weapons, or you know just let nobody have nuclear weapons at all and India has said that India is willing to give up nuclear weapons. If everybody else in the world gives up nuclear weapons as well. And so, if you look at it from that standpoint from a principle standpoint I would say that India is right in believing that the NPT is discriminatory. If India can have nuclear weapons and doesn't sign on to the NPT why can't Iran have nuclear weapons, why should Iran have to, you know, forgo its nuclear weapons. And if you if you talk about it from a principle point of view that India's interest is, let Iran have nuclear weapons, except of course that India has not made it stand clear at all on this issue. So if India wants to say that Iran should not have nuclear weapons that India should talk about why it thinks that Iran should not have nuclear weapons, while it can have nuclear weapons itself. But again India has not, you know articulated any clear policy, it sits on the fence it doesn't want to take a stand. It's not clear and as a result I think what you're seeing. And that's where I think this question hits the nail on the head is that on the West side India is not being a good ally. And to India the West is not being a good ally because the West is asking India to do things that India doesn't want to do. And so, you know in many ways this is a this is a product of not having a clear foreign policy outlook. I have a question from Roshana regarding personnel capacity in India. What are the reasons for the low numbers of Indian civil servants and what solutions long term short term can help. Yeah, this is another question that I tackle both early in my book as well as late in my book because, you know, if you look at the Indian Foreign Service, it has as many diplomats as Singapore does which is particular because Singapore is a third or a fourth of, you know the size of New Delhi. And so, India's small foreign service has in many ways, kind of left its dent on Indian foreign policy and on India's quest for global leadership, because you find that you've got one diplomat doing many things and they don't really have the bandwidth to do you know kind of do the kind of strategic thinking and planning that's required for India's foreign policy, particularly at a time when there are crises around the world. And so, India doesn't really start taking a stand, but the groundwork is not being done because India simply doesn't have any diplomats on the ground to do that groundwork and to understand, okay, you know, in Iran or in Ukraine this is what India needs to do because this is what in Iranian or Ukrainian civil society things. This is what the government thinks is what the people think that sort of ground research and intelligence work is really not being done to the level that it should be done, because India doesn't have enough people on the ground. Now the reasons for this are, honestly speaking, quite bizarre. One reason that's put out, you know, quite often is that it's a product of India's bureaucratic hierarchy in that, you know, everybody who is in the foreign service wants to someday retire as ambassador or deputy ambassador. And if you have a large foreign service that's not possible, because you can only have so many people becoming ambassadors someday. And so what happens is that there's an incredible filtering effort that goes in at the entry point itself, where you've got millions and millions of people trying to write this entrance exam. And at the end of it, you have 3035 people being recruited each year into the foreign service. And then, you know, at some point they're kind of, I think, practically guaranteed that at the time of their retirement, they will become you know, undersecretaries or ambassadors or deputy ambassadors someday. And so this I think in some ways is one argument that's made people say that the bureaucracy doesn't want to expand itself. Because it would lose its privileges and it would become less elitist in some sense. The other reason I think that that is, that is kind of, you know, thrown around a bit is that the exam structure, the exam system itself is not adapted to recruiting a large foreign service. India uses a generalist exam system and so everybody who wants to be a railway officer or a police officer or tax collector or a diplomat or anything else in the Indian government needs to write this one single generalist exam. And then at the end of it, you know, you are ranked based on your performance in that exam. And then people who are ranked higher up will get the service of their choice or preference, whereas people who are ranked further down get, you know, the service that is not of their preference. And so for several years what was happening was that people who are ranked higher up, they wanted to be in the administrative service, the domestic administrative service, because they were seen as a more powerful and prestigious position. You know, you do get to have, I do remember very distinctly this very interesting conversation with a diplomat at the UN, an Indian diplomat at the UN, who is today one of India's ambassadors in Africa. And, you know, we were walking together from the permanent mission of India to the UN secretariat and headquarters. It's only about two or three blocks away and so very walkable and, you know, through the traffic of, you know, downtown Midtown Manhattan. And while we were walking, you know, this diplomat, I happened to ask him because at that point I was doing research for my book and I asked him, okay, what do you think is the difference between the IAS which is the Indian administrative service and the Indian foreign service. And he said, you know, look at us, we are walking here, we're all suited and booted and we are walking to work. Whereas a guy, my colleague who is, you know, in the IAS, we passed in the same exam, the same batch, we went to school together, and he's now got a car and, you know, he's got servants around him, he's bought a personal chauffeur and he gets driven all around town wherever he wants to go to the various villages, etc. People treat him like a king, whereas we are walking to work. So he said that, you know, in some sense people want to join the IAS, they don't want to join the foreign service, because, you know, they tend to suffer kind of, well, not suffer but, you know, tend to enjoy fewer privileges on the ground wherever they are working since they are one of several other diplomats in that country. And so as a result, you've found that a lot of higher ranking people actually for many years, not currently, but for many years, were actually going into the IAS and not into the foreign service, and the foreign service ended up, you know, picking from a smaller talent pool, if you will, which reflects to this day. So the whole system, in my opinion, needs an overhaul. I don't see really why a guy who wants to be a diplomat for the Indian government should be answering questions on wildlife sanctuaries and sculptures and, you know, that sort of stuff. Rather than questions on Ukraine and Russia and, you know, what foreign policy stand should India take on Palestine or Iran. The question is that diplomat should be judged on and their aptitude should be judged on, but the current generalist exam structure that India has does not allow for that sort of aptitude testing and and that kind of evaluation of of Indian diplomatic recruits so I think the entire system really to be honest is outdated and deserves to have an overhaul. And there are several ways to do this I've written extensively about it in various newspapers over the years. There are ways in which India can recruit its diplomats properly and suitably and and and you know expand its foreign service. We have a question from Stuart. How does India Indian, excuse me, how does India project cultural power is you through the narrow Institute language film etc. For example, the Confucius Institute go to Institute British Council and so on. And India does not do this India should be doing it it's actually an argument that's being made now in India by many people of course now the question is, you know, do you do kind of showcase diversity and secularism or do you showcase majoritarianism and the other stuff. India does not do this India India has never done this traditionally as I was talking about the diaspora and India soft power around the world. A lot of it has been very organic. It has been bottom up, and it's always been that way I mean in my book I talk about the, the Chola Kings of South India, who managed to enjoy influence and Southeast Asia, well far away from the government. And the way that that happened was because merchants and you know sages and saints and all of these other people were actually going to Southeast Asia from India, and they took their culture with them, and over a period of time built up that sort of cultural influence bottom up. You know at the end of it, actually they ended up Indian kings and in Southeast Asia, and then you know they linked back to the Chola Kingdom in India, and then the Chola Kingdom in some sense became really the only Indian kingdom or Indian Empire and history to enjoy sovereignty or influence outside of the Indian subcontinent. India's soft power in many ways always been kind of bottom up it's never been top down in nature. And I don't think that's particularly a bad thing I think in many ways cultural influence works better when you know track to diplomacy happens or civil society happens. I think it works better when Indian students go abroad and showcase Indian culture or, you know, when Indian singers and Bollywood superstars go abroad. I think that that way of that that method of building soft power appeal. I feel like it's a bit more impactful and effective than the government doing it and you know the the case of the Confucius institutes is one reason why I mean you look at what's happening now with Confucius institutes, you find a lot of countries around the world, particularly in the West have started becoming somewhat suspicious of them and and some of the universities, particularly in the US have started closing down Confucius institutes on their campus as well, because they think that it's a platform for propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party. And so I think in some ways bottom up propaganda, if you will, works better than top down in position of soft power and culture. And maybe, you know that that's just work better for India over the years. Thank you. And we have a final question from Abhishek. Would you think that the socio political discourse today in India, whether around domestic or foreign policy means far too much in technology using it to scaffold its ambivalence. Can you repeat that question. That's a complicated question. I think that the socio political discourse today in India, whether around domestic or foreign policy means far too much in technology, using it to scaffold its ambivalence. It's interesting that by technology, you mean social media, given that India is a large country and very active and vocal on social media anybody who tweets about India would learn that India has a very large presence on Twitter. It's very common to find Indians with thousands and thousands of followers, you will not find that as much as common in the West. That's the observation that I've made on Twitter. But, you know, this is a very new phenomenon. It's really only the Modi government that's kind of taken to social media and used it as a platform for, I want to say propaganda but maybe I'll go with public diplomacy. And, you know, it's a culture that I think is still very new. And it's unfortunately very partisan in nature as well. And so what you find on social media or through the use of technology and so on, is more a BJP foreign policy than an Indian foreign policy. You will find for instance, very vocal vociferous support today for Vladimir Putin and for the invasion of Ukraine on right wing Indian Twitter. You will not find that an Indian foreign policy discourse. So on Indian Twitter, it's very dangerous to criticize Putin, even though India as a country on the world stage follows a foreign policy of ambivalence. There's very, very limited ambivalence on Indian social media. Indian Twitter users always have an opinion on anything and everything. And there is a network. It's been fairly well documented and proven that there is a network linked to the Indian ruling party, the BJP, that is very, very vocal and active on social media, and tends to, you know, sort of play up certain things and underplace certain other things, even if Indian policy or foreign policy is going in a, you know, is, is not taking that route. So what you find on social media I think in some sense is a quote unquote unofficial foreign policy, where, you know, accounts that are linked to the BJP and and the IT cell tend to take very vocal positions on certain things that that the Indian government does not feel comfortable talking about or, you know, that the Indian government does not feel comfortable taking an institutional position on. And so it leads to this this undercurrent of an unofficial foreign policy, I think in some sense, which I think is quite rightly termed as a scaffolding of Indian foreign policy and politics. Thank you, Mohammad Zeeshan. I'd like to thank you for showing more on the performance of India's foreign policy, the challenges in your hopes for the future. I'd like to thank our attendees for joining us today. We really do look forward to finding out more on this topic from your book. Where can we find out more about you and your book. Oh, you can order it anywhere in the world in India it is available and in every bookstore. There is an international edition in the works, but I don't have a clear date on when, or even if it will be available soon. But you can still order the edition that's that's already available anywhere in the world to Amazon UK or Amazon.com or anywhere else. And I do look forward to hearing your thoughts and reviews on on social media and on Amazon and wherever else you're able to post about it. Wonderful. Once again, Mohammad Zeeshan, thank you so much. Thank you to attendees for joining us today. I wish everyone a wonderful evening. Thank you. Take care everyone. Goodbye.