 Hello and welcome to our final Lowy Institute event of the year. A very warm welcome to everyone joining us from Australia and to those dialing in from overseas. My name is Michael Fulilove and I'm the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. This event is part of what we've called the Long Distance Lowy Institute where we communicate our content and analysis online while we're unable to do so in person. I'm delighted to have as my guest today India's Minister of External Affairs Dr Subramanyam Jai Shankar. Now I'd be pleased to host any Indian Foreign Minister both because of India's weight in the world as well as the great promise contained within the Australia-India bilateral relationship. But I'm particularly pleased to be hosting Dr Jai Shankar. A mutual friend, the former US Ambassador to India Richard Verma described Dr Jai Shankar as one of the world's best diplomats and I agree. He was born into a distinguished family of high achievers. He earned a BA at St. Stephen's College in Delhi before completing his graduate studies including a doctorate from Jawaharlal Nehru University specializing in nuclear diplomacy. He joined the Foreign Service in 1977 and he served in Indian missions in capitals such as Moscow and Tokyo and was Ambassador or High Commissioner in Prague, Singapore, Beijing and Washington. He also held a number of important posts back in India culminating in his appointment as Foreign Secretary. After retiring from that post in 2018 Dr Jai Shankar joined Tata Sons as President of Global Corporate Affairs and then following the 2019 Indian election Prime Minister Modi appointed him Minister of External Affairs the first Foreign Secretary to occupy Room 172 in South Block the Minister's Office. I first met Dr Jai Shankar on a trip to Beijing a decade ago when he was India's Ambassador to the Middle Kingdom. His son Dhruva was also a colleague of mine at the Brookings Institution back in the day and I should say for the purposes of disclosure the Dhruva Jai Shankar who's now the Director of the US Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation is also a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute. I've long admired Dr Jai Shankar as a cool-headed, tough-minded strategic thinker. I wanted to host him at Bly Street for a while. We'd hoped to do that this year but I'm grateful that in light of COVID he's instead agreed to appear virtually at this Lowy Institute event. Some brief housekeeping before we begin. I'm going to have a conversation with the Minister for about 45 minutes then I'll put some questions to him that our audience members have pre-submitted when they registered online. All right, Dr Jai Shankar I want to go back to the start of your life and ask about your upbringing. What were the key influences on your world view as a young man and why did you decide to become a diplomat? It's a, I suppose, a long story. I think looking back, I mean there was a very dominant influence which was my father. He was a civil servant who went into the think tank world. In a sense I would say very, very objectively probably of the previous generation he was the dominant figure and he did a lot to shape Indian foreign policy and defense policy, national security policy. And when you grow up in a household where you know you read the morning papers and you discuss what's happening in the world at breakfast, it sort of seeps into you without you actually knowing it. It's a sort of osmosis process. So even though I studied other subjects, you know, science initially, in fact, chemistry but this was always the passion if you would, or was the household connector. And then when I reached the master stage I decided I would make, you know, study what was closest to my interest. So I, you know, part of it was also I think growing up in the Delhi of that era, you know, it was an era I was seven years old when we had the war with China. I was 10 years old when we had the war with Pakistan at the 65 war. Then Bangladesh was a I would say almost like a defining event for someone of my generation. So some of it was the times, some of it clearly was the house and then once I got into doing an MA in political science and then, you know, further degrees, then it was the university and, you know, the environment around you. So I guess all of that, but I must tell you a funny story here. When I was in JNU and I was sort of ahead of my class not because I was smart, but because I was put into school early by my parents. So I was looking at doing a PhD and I got a very good offer from ANU. So I was actually on my way to Australia when I was all of 21. And my father very, I mean, I don't know, but accidentally or manipulatively told me, you know, why don't you have a shot at the civil service exam? And my brother had just cleared it a year before. And so I took the exam and ended up in the foreign service, but, you know, I could have been in a very different part with Australia very much earlier in my life Well, that's ANU's loss, but India's gain, I would say, Dr. Jai Shankar. Tell us, you passed the civil service exam, you joined the foreign service, you travelled, you served around the world. You would have come across a lot of impressive figures over the course of your diplomatic and now political career. I won't ask you to say who was the most impressive, but who has impressed you a lot as you look back over the course of your career? What, what to my mind would be someone bold, someone imaginative, someone, someone with a, you know, with a, how would I say, really a global strategic sense. And there I might be tempted actually to name Kondirajs. And the reason is a very direct experience we had with that administration, which was, you know, the initiative they took on the nuclear deal. And if you looked at it, you know, all the, the Salvation expertise, the Indian expertise, probably in the American system would have said, don't do this, because, you know, for them it was India, Pakistan, etc. A lot of the non-proliferation people would have said, no, you know, hang on a moment, think this one more deeply, which would be a nice way of saying no. But I think she approached it as a globalist. As someone who actually was thinking, you know, 10, 20 years at it, and looking at where was the world going that America would need different partners and different relationships, and that India could be one of them. And to my mind, you know, I really saw that from the American end, as the sort of a judgment of a global strategist over narrow specialization. And I try, in my own way, to actually keep, you know, keep trying to get out of the boxes in which we naturally tend to seek comfort. That, you know, it's good to have area specialization, it's good to have functional specialization, but that ability to put it together and then think big and then say, well, that's the call I'm going to take. And it was a very big call, which, you know, George W. Bush took. So, and you can see in the 15 years later what an impact it's had. So that would be one answer I'll give you. All right. At the end of this stellar diplomatic career, as I mentioned, you received a battlefield promotion, as it were, to become the minister. The first foreign secretary in your system to become the minister. That's also, that's never happened in the Australian system. What's the difference between being the chief bureaucrat in the ministry versus being the minister and what's more satisfying and what's more fun? Well, I, you know, look, there's a difference, okay? I tell, you know, the first time, and you relate to this as an Australian. It's one thing to sit, as you say, in the gallery of the house and look at your minister on the floor of the house. It's another thing to be on the floor of the house. So, so that sense of, you know, the buck stopping there is much stronger as a minister than as a foreign secretary or an undersecretary in perhaps in your palace. Some of it is also, you grew, okay? I think I was a decent foreign secretary. I would pride myself on the fact that I had a grip on my domain. But what I would say reflecting on the year and a half as a minister is my domains, my horizons have actually widened. I now see a lot of issues which may be domestic, which may be non-foreign policy, but which have, you know, somewhere there is a connection. I may not have looked at it with the same degree of sensitivity and awareness earlier as a civil servant, which I would do today as a politician and partly because you mix with a different crowd. You know, your peer group is very different. You pick up a lot of things. I mean, being with other ministers is an enormous education because they bring to bear, you know, so many other things into your work and then you stitch it together. And so, you know, in your previous question, as I said, you know, that ability to integrate and, you know, globalist as I said, when comes to foreign policy, I think it has to, a minister is a much more holistic outlook than probably even the best civil servant and I would make that distinction. And you know, through my period, I had a, as foreign secretary, I had a minister to whom, you know, I was, we were very close both professionally and personally and I had the comfort that, look, eventually she was there. There was somebody, you know, she would tell me, it's a phrase which works better in our own language, but like, look, I'm there, don't bother. That is actually something a minister should do and makes a big difference, which the benefit of which actually the civil servants, even including the foreign secretary, enjoy. All right, well, you get, we get a sense of this holistic perspective that you've acquired in this terrific book, The India Way, Strategies for an Uncertain World. It's not that common actually for a foreign minister to publish a book of this sort of length and vision and thoughtfulness. What was your thinking in writing this book and what's the main argument you're seeking to make? Well, let me, let me address the argument and then you'll understand, I'll then come to why I wrote the book. I mean, if I were to drill down and say, okay, pick two key words of that book, it would be rebalancing and multipolarity. And the case, the argument that I make is look over the last 60 years, 70 years, the global order, the hierarchy has changed. The weight of countries absolute and relative to each other has changed. The capabilities have changed. And therefore the world is really very much more different than it used to be. Now you would say, well, that's reasonably obvious, but I would argue it's not. It's not because we're all set in habits that we tend to, and we also have an interest sometimes in perpetuating what is to our advantage. So the ability to capture change, internalize it and plan and strategize on that basis, that is actually a challenge. It's a challenge not just independence. I think that change, I mean, I can say this to you as an Australian and you can even see in critics that the teams are not what they used to be, either in absolute terms or relative to each other. And this is still happening. And it will always happen. This is an endless process. Now what does it do? It basically, this rebalancing and multipolarity actually creates a new architecture. The new structures, the new institutions, sometimes new regimes or modified regimes, new norms. And as we are all also seeing, sometimes new behavior that the narratives, the conversations, the metaphors, they all change. Now all of this is taking place in the backdrop of globalization and globalization always has to be in the mind of every policy planner today. Because, again, I'm kind of simplifying it, but for purposes of policy, that's useful. We are far more interpenetrative and interdependent than we've ever been. And you know, analogies to the First World War era, et cetera, to my mind, don't get it at all. I think today our mutual dependence and our mutual presence in each other's lives is so much more. Now what it does is it creates actually constrained competition. That if you accept that competition is a natural way of politics among nations. But you don't have that elbow room or many of the options which you would have in a less globalized data. And you actually, whether it is finance or whether it's tech stuff or whether it's economic stuff, you have to now play the game in this constrained competitive world, which sometimes means different ways of playing it. So what's the result of all of this? I think you have new metrics of power. You have new instruments of policy. You have new agendas, new sometimes new causes of competition. You have a new definition of national security. If you look at the post-COVID era, which I'm sure will come, my sense is we will not look at national security in a defense or even foreign policy way. We will start thinking of health, of food, of trade, of data, of energy all as a much more expanded view of national security. And the issue would be sort of how do you deal with this? And so I actually spent quite a lot of time addressing what in a sense are new nationalisms that have come about. And there is a latent bit in my book, Bear in Mind. I sort of finished this by late spring of this year. So it was well before the American elections. But the debate which now you can see picking up about decline is the West declining, is America declining. I've not addressed it frontally at that time, but it is there somewhere in that book. And I've addressed it from an Indian perspective, that I'm not myself a great believer in that view. I mean, there are debates. In fact, I just saw a very interesting piece by Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi on this subject. But to my mind, it creates an argument for a different relationship between the West and India. And that's something which I've actually devoted a chapter to. So to sum up really, if you ask me why did I write this book, I would say reason one would be to get Indians thinking about the world. That sort of their sense of their alertness to the changes in a way. I felt if somebody needed to trigger it and find it, and create a domestic debate. Secondly, I felt it was useful that the world must know also the changes which are taking place in India. What are the Indian thought processes? Somebody needs to articulate it in a reasonably systematic way. And in a sort of contemporary and sort of relevant way. And part of it, again, is if you look at how the world's been analyzing India, some of it, I think, is based on a lack of understanding what's happening in India. And I'd be happy to talk about that. I mean, I see the changes in India as actually the success of the democratic experiment. Democracy has produced today a different India than what it was 70 years ago. And I think that's also something the world has to understand. And of course, the third part of it is this interplay. What is India thinking about the world? What should the world know about India? Then how do we sit together and fashion out a new relationship? And certainly the COVID element, because there's an epilogue which has been added to the book, which was, I wrote it as actually the COVID was at its peak, which was April, May, June period. And that, I think, has sharpened many of the trends that I've spoken about. The long answer, but I thought I should explain it at some length. All right. Let's take up COVID. Briefly, give us an update. Give our Australian viewers in particular an update about the effect that COVID has had on India and how you think India will bounce back from the pandemic. Well, look like everybody else in the world. I mean, it took us completely by surprise. I think the scale, the intensity, the enormity of it was just beyond imagination. But it was also a fact that we were, like many other nations, completely unprepared. When the COVID hit us, for example, there was no PPE producer in India. We didn't make ventilators in India. There were two companies who were actually assembling N95 masks. There was no testing kits being made for this. So if you looked actually at our ability to respond, it was not that we had our ability to respond. It was not that. And now what we did was, we bought ourselves time. We were one of the early countries which went for a very extensive lockdown. And during this period, we actually built up an enormous response system at a very high speed. So we set up about 15,000 dedicated COVID centers across the country. We have today a very large number of companies, more than 100 companies which make PPEs. We are more than 25, 30 producers of ventilators. We are actually beginning to export these now. And we do think, in fact, we are not only producing testing kits, but we actually think it's an area where some of the initiatives underway may lead to dramatic reduction in testing times. So there's some potentially good news very, very near in the horizon. And of course, now with the vaccine coming on, I think our ability to scale up production is going to make a difference to a lot of vaccines, I think including probably the Australian one. So what, at this moment, I would say a sort of a short summary of where we are would be, we seem to have peaked, you know, that August, July, August part of September. The cases, the daily cases are down to one-third of what the peak was. And similarly, that is a case of the fatality rates as well. We have a very, very high recovery rate. It's in the 90s, 90% and we have an extremely low fatality rate. It's just a little more than 1% of the people infected. And I think a lot of that reflect our preparedness that we sort of put in place. Now, since August, we are back, we are trying to move towards economic normalcy. And certainly the economic figures for September, October, November have been quite encouraging. I think in very large parts of the economy, we are back to pre-COVID levels. In some cases, many cases actually much higher. But at the same time, I'd be very honest. I would say there are large parts of the economy which still have to come out of it because the informal sector, a lot of the services sector, they, because the social distancing norms have affected their business, they are going to take some time. We've had a good agriculture season. So that's quite helpful. So I think the overall sense is our financial year is still end of March. At the end of the financial year, we will probably, we will still be in the negative zone, but much less deep than it looked like at the beginning of the year. And I think we will hit again the 8% growth rate into the coming year. People are fairly confident that it's happening. And it's been a process of self-discovery in a way. That, I mean, when I look at the discipline which people showed, I mean, in India, I mean, you go around Delhi. You will not see a person without a mask. I mean, everybody, I mean, it's now sort of almost an instinct now to go in, use the hand sanitizer, keep your social distancing. So it's seeped down. And a lot of that, I think, has been the leadership. I mean, the leadership was very clear. Prime Minister, particularly in going out there, being on the TV, telling people, saying, look, be careful. This is what you need to do. This is for your own good. We had a festival season. Prime Minister made a special effort to tell people, saying, look, don't let the festival season let you drop your guard. So one part of it has been sort of a leadership reformation. But the other part of it has been to me very interesting, which is digital. That, you know, our main contact tracing app was a digital app on everybody's phone. It had worked extremely well in terms of, you know, ensuring quarantine and alerting people to potential problems. But it wasn't just the COVID. I mean, it was because a lot of the, especially a lot of the people living in the countryside who migrate to cities, went back home. We were able to put money in people's bank accounts on a scale probably which would be unprecedented in history. You know, something like 400 million bank accounts. So money go directly into it. Now, in the old days, if you were not digitized, frankly, a large part of the money would have disappeared on the way. Similarly, we were feeding, you know, we were able to give food to people who needed it. And we were able to send rations out to 800 million people and make sure again that the right people come. So the power of the digital has actually been a very big, I wouldn't say discovery because somehow we all knew intuitively it was there, but a validation of the power of the digital. That's been, to my mind, the big takeaway from this experience. All right, thank you for that. Now, I want to take you through a couple of major powers and ask you about India's relations with those countries quite quickly if we can so I can get through as many as possible before I come back to the relationship with Australia. Let me start with China. You witnessed the ascent of Xi Jinping in person as the Indian ambassador to Beijing. What were your impressions of Xi Jinping? How do you think he sees the world? What are his ambitions for China? Put it this way. I think there has been an evolution in China. My book basically makes the case that 2008, 2009 was the tipping point for that change. And you have today a China whose engagement with the world is very different from the way it used to be conducted 20 years ago. Now, you could argue that it is natural as a country goes up the power hierarchy that its behavioral pattern would change. I reserve comment on it. But clearly, I mean, no question that you have a very much more nationalistic China and that is expressed sort of down the line in a variety of ways and often in policies as well. All right. Let me ask you how India engages with China even in the difficult times. As you know, Australia is involved in a disagreement at the moment with China. I won't ask you about that. But of course, in India, we've seen tensions at the line of actual control escalate to the point of armed conflict. Yet you have had to manage or maintain your engagement with China. So what is India's approach to maintaining your cooperation with China at the same time without giving into Chinese coercion and without giving into Chinese demands? Well, you know, we are today probably at the most difficult phase of our relationship with China. Certainly in the last 30 to 40 years, you could argue even more. The last time there were military casualties on our border was in 1975. So just to give you a sense of time there. Now, why do we have this problem? We have this problem because from 1988, our relationship probably, I mean, this had its hiccups, we've had our issues, differences are not in denial of all of that. But if you look at the direction of the ties, the direction of the ties broadly were positive. You know, 30 years ago, there was virtually no trade with China. Today, China is our number two trade partner after the United States. There was no travel with China. You know, before COVID happened, I mean, more than a million Indians went on a fair number of Chinese people. So, you know, variety of ways, I mean, we engage each other pretty much in every domain of activity. Now, all of this was posited on the fact that while we were trying to solve the boundary question, we would maintain peace and tranquility along the border lines. You can have differences and you had, you know, there were patrols which came, you'd get into arguments, sometimes they'd be face offs, but you never had, you know, sort of a major breach of this understanding. Now, we had two agreements, in fact, not two, multiple agreements starting from 1993, which essentially asked both parties, to the commitment, not to bring large forces to the Bund. Now, for some reason, for which the Chinese have today given us five differing explanations, the Chinese have violated it. The Chinese have literally brought tens of thousands of soldiers, you know, in the full military preparation mode, right to the line of actual control in Ladakh. Now, naturally the relationship would be profoundly disturbed by this. So, what has happened? And then, you know, when you had soldiers very close up, and it was not entirely surprising that something went horribly wrong. So, the fact is that you've had, you know, we've had 20 casualties up there. And I think it has completely changed national sentiment as a result. So, today, how do we, you know, get the relationship back on track? I think that's a very big issue. And we are very clear that, you know, maintaining peace and tranquility along the line of actual control is the basis for the rest of the relationship to progress. So, you can't have the kind of situation you have on the border and say, well, let's carry on with life, you know, in all other sectors of activity. It's just unrealistic. So, very frankly, the relationship this year has been, I would say, very significantly damaged. And when you ask me, how are we dealing with it? Well, I have met, you know, I've had phone calls with my counterpart. I met my counterpart when we were both together in Moscow. Our defense minister has met his counterpart. The military commanders are in touch with each other. Our ambassadors sort of do what they have to do with their respective functions. So, we have multiple layers of communication. We are talking to the Chinese. So, communication is not the issue. The issue is the fact that we have agreements and those agreements are not being observed. All right, let me ask you about a very different great power, the United States. The U.S. has been a big part of your career. Of course, you knew or you got to observe closely the president-elect, Mr. Biden, when he was vice president, when you were ambassador, and also Mr. Blinken, of course, who was a senior official in the Obama administration in that period. What kind of president do you think Mr. Biden will make and what kind of relationship do you look forward to having between India and the United States over the next four years? Well, you know, where the president-elect is concerned, I mean, I, of course, observed him as vice president, including during the visit, the two visits that Prime Minister Modi made to Washington. But we actually also remember him as a very, you know, positive senator who made a very big contribution when he was in the leadership position of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So his goodwill for India, and you know, he's had in the course of the campaign as well, occasions to express that. I think that is very manifested. Come to India also on a visit as vice president. I was not, I was in China at that time. But where Tony Blinken is concerned, yes, when I was foreign secretary, he was my direct counterpart as deputy secretary. I knew him when I was in Washington as well. I found it very, very easy to work with him. I mean, it's both in terms of his world view as well as his personal characteristics. It was something, you know, which I could very, very easily sort of engage. My, you know, I put it this way. Yes, I grant you there is the, there is what you call the subjective part of it, the people, their views, you know, their preferences, etc. And my answer would have given you a sense that that department I think is fairly good. But I think there is a structural part of it, the objective part of it, which also we should look at, which is really what is it today that brings India and the United States together. Because if you looked at the trajectory of this relationship, it has actually been remarkably sort of, I would say positive through what would now be the fifth administration, I mean, since Bill Clinton's time. And if you really have, let us say, very strong relate, continuously improving relationship with five over five administrations. However important the presidents are, we must also give credit that there's something, you know, you know, out there, which is, which is, which is, you know, some convergence, deeper convergence out there. And I would say the, you know, I first started dealing with this relationship in 1981. Okay, Ronald Reagan has just become interested. When I look at where we are there and where we are now, it's not just the goodwill and the positive one. I look at the, at the breadth of the relationship, of breadth of the engagement actually, that if you look at the business side, the students, the, you know, the tech relationships, the community, the familiarity. I mean, I used to do the Congress in the early 80s, you know, I used to have to explain, you know, where I was coming from. I mean, literally, whereas, you know, now you have people who are, who are so much more focused on, on the relationship and on their part. So there's been actually a qualitative shift. I think it's structural. It's a, it's a, to my mind, it's an evolution which has taken some time after the end of the Cold War. But again, I've come back to those two key words. I told you at the beginning of the conversation, it's rebalancing and multipolarity. I think the United States today sees India as in a multipolar world as having a more prominent role. The United States should be more conscious that it needs more partners. It needs more partners, you know, beyond its formal alliance structures. And, you know, that's, that's something we are respectful of, but we are, we are not part of it. And we have a different history. That's not, that's not the kind of relationship we have with any country. But this ability of the United States to work with more partners, I think, will be one factor, a very important factor why, why, you know, this relationship is going to be very different. All right. Speaking of new partners and developing relationships, let me ask you about India's relations with Australia. In the last few years, there's been a thickening of the relationship culminating in participation by all four members of the Quad, for example, in Exercise Malabar. What's your assessment at the moment of the Australia-India relationship? I, I, I would say in the last year and a half, at least this tenure as, as foreign minister, if there is one relationship, I take great satisfaction in, which is the India-Australia relationship. Because I've actually seen a change in that year, year and a half. And I think I would credit both Prime Minister Morrison and my counterpart Murray Spain for that. Now, why does this matter? It matters because in this multi-polar world that I've described to you, where we have to look beyond, you know, old habits and established structures. We have common interests. I think we have deeply shared values. I mean, we're not only democracies. We're not only, we are also Commonwealth democracies and we are cricket playing the Commonwealth democracy. You know, that's a quality of the standard of its own. And, and we, you know, it's important beyond the one or two parts because sometimes we are too obsessed with the, you know, how is US China going to work out? How is US Russia going to work out? That's very important. But there is today a requirement for a lot of other countries with more capabilities to contribute to the shaping of the global order, to ensure global good, to secure the global commerce. And I think here if you have, you know, converging interests and you have shared values and you're late to each other in different ways, I think in many ways it's a partnership which was waiting to happen. And since we had, you know, the right combination if I can be presumptuous enough to say so at both ends, I think it's worked exceedingly well. And it's not worked just between India and Australia. I mean, I would urge you to look at the fact that we are actually expanding our sort of conversations. I mean, we have, today we had a trilateral between India-Australia and Japan for some time, but we are now looking at one with Indonesia, one also one with France. So the conversations are also getting, you know, deeper and more relevant and not just again between the foreign ministries. I think it's a lot of other people including defence are in it. All right. One more question on Australia. You have a very pithy line in your book where you summarise what you think India should do in the world. And you say this is a time for us to engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia, bring Japan into play, draw neighbours in, extend the neighbourhood and expand traditional constituencies of support. What verb would you apply to India's ambitions vis-a-vis Australia? Are you engaging us? Are you cultivating us? Are you bringing us into play? What are India's ambitions for Australia? Play cricket with Australia. But look, I think with Australia, we certainly, whether it's foreign policy, defence security, especially maritime security, one part of it is what happens between us. We'd like to obviously promote more trade, more education, more innovation. I think health is an area where we are broken up to the possibility. So there's a lot going on. We are also, the fact that we are market economies, I think is also helpful to discuss. So I would certainly be very supportive of more business, more policy interactions, more societal sort of engagement. So that's one part of it. The other part is really how do we India and Australia sit down and figure out what can we do vis-a-vis our respective regions and the rest of the world. I think that's an equally important part of the relationship, consequential for both of us and consequential for the world. So I think there's another part of the book somewhere. I don't have it readily in front of me, where I've actually listed up same group, think beyond, in a sense, the P5. This is a different space has opened up. A different space has opened up for you can call the middle powers, use some, anything, a kind of a, I would say G20, but not P5, so the other 15 you can say. I think the other 15 today have an opportunity or window to do more between themselves and between them and the world. And I think India-Australia will be a very important part. All right. Let me put some questions from the audience to you, if I may minister. We had, you mentioned before that Australia and India are both democracies. We had a couple of questions from audience members about the condition of democracy and human rights in India. You might have, and you might have seen minister, there was recently a piece in The Economist which purported to graph the rule of law and freedoms and civil liberties in India, for example. And it argued that there's been a dip in the rule of law and civil liberties under Prime Minister Modi that's been the deepest since the days of the emergency under Prime Minister Gandhi. Now, you may disagree with that assessment, but can I ask you as Foreign Minister, are you concerned by, I think you kind of alluded to this a bit earlier, are you concerned by some perceptions in the West that India is moving in an illiberal direction? Well, you know, you cited that particular example. It's a magazine. It's a publication. If you look at them over the last few years, the political biases are pretty evident, okay, including in the election. And I thought about it and, you know, not just about them. I mean, the larger, larger issue. And my, and I've sort of referred to it in passing in the book. Maybe I should write a book on this by itself. A lot of the problem today, you must understand, is those in the West looking at India and writing about India and commenting on India are not able to come to terms with the changes that are taking place in India. And what are those changes? I mentioned them at the start of this conversation. You've had a very deep democratization of India. You know, 70 years ago, when you looked at what is the Indian leadership, you know, there would be much more English speaking. There would be much more big city. There would be much more people like us. Okay. So I would suggest to you a large part of why we are, you know, you get this kind of analysis is that you have people looking at India and saying, oh, these are not the people we know. They talk a different language. We are not sure what their thought processes is. Their social habits are different. So they're not the nice, nice Indians we used to know. They are different. And they don't make an, you know, an effort to really to understand this. I think in a sense, I mean, it comes down frankly to a kind of a globalization and elitism problem that we have, we are also having a cultural shift in India. And so, so every election, they would predict that, you know, this is going to go the other way. I mean, not obviously, you cited a publication, look at their own predictions in the past. I mean, they pretty much got everything about India wrong in the last six years. And that's, that's to my mind, there's a bigger issue out there, which is, you know, how does this changing India communicate better with the world? And how do we make the world make the effort to understand this better? I think this is an issue. And frankly to me as a former minister, it is a challenge that I need to focus on very strong. Minister, a couple of other questions from the audience. We had a question from Douglas Stuart Brooks who asks the following, do you see the relationship between Australia and India ever developing into formal trade and defence pact? You know, I think, I mean, a formal trade pact, I think there's interest on both parties to, there is a discussion on a free trade agreement, a bilateral free trade agreement as well, because as you know, we didn't sign the RCEP. But I would say I can imagine, and I think it would be very natural for us to have a lot of understandings and agreements. But my sense is that the, that kind of thinking that it all revolves around alliances and formal structures, the world we have now entered is formal, formal, I would say ad hoc and formal, customised then it used to be. So I can certainly see that we would have very strong defence ties and I hope very strong trade cooperation. How formal it would be, I think is a very open question. All right, you mentioned India's decision not to join RCEP, and you gave a speech last month setting out why that was. Can I just ask you what do you think, in terms of India succeeding economically, what is the importance of global economic engagement to India's economic success? I think it's vital. I think it's vital because, you know, globalization is like gravity. I mean, it's there. You can disagree with how it plays out, but it is in this day and age, nobody can be in denial of globalization. And if you look at the history certainly of Asia, all the modernization and economic progress in Asia has happened through greater global engagement, not with less global engagement. So I don't believe that the autarctic model has a future at all, but here's the important bit. If you are going to engage the world, it's important to get your terms of engagement right. I don't think the issue is today engage or don't engage. I think the issue is engage right or engage wrong. And some of the issues on which I've been speaking on, particularly leading up to the RCEP is, I think many of the earlier engagements were not well thought through, certainly not well implemented from the Indian perspective. They've had a very negative impact on the Indian economy. If you look at the trade deficit in the last decade, with RCEP countries it has moved from $43 billion to $110 billion. And there are a number of reasons. Some of it relates to us, some of it relates to the RCEP partners. I mean, there are issues of market access. We shouldn't pretend there are not. There are issues of subsidies. There are issues of non-market economies. All these are affected. But, you know, I've repeatedly sort of emphasized in my book and I continue to do in my speeches and in my policymaking, which is you have to use the world to get ahead, whether it is in technology, resources, best practices, markets, opportunities. So, and the policy that we are now following is really build more, as we say, make, you know, build more capacities for make in India, but make for the world. We would welcome, I mean, we are very happy with the fact today that global company like Apple or Samsung has moved part of their global supply chain to India. We welcome it. So, we in fact have a policy today of, you know, incentivizing more global companies in a very wide variety of sectors to come to India. We're making it easier to do business in it. So, we are very global. Make no mistake about it. But, again, I repeat, being global doesn't mean sort of blindly signing up to what other people put in front of you. I think you've got to negotiate your interests well. And as you said somewhere in my introduction, I am a very, very committed and passionate negotiator. We have a question from Yadu Singh who asks, what is the role for the Indian diaspora in strengthening Australia-India relations? I think the diaspora can make a difference. It has done so with many other countries. The US would be an important example. You know, what the diaspora, there is the old, the conventional argument I would say, and in a sense the emerging argument. The conventional argument would be, you know, people, Indians are very family-centric. When they immigrate, they keep touch with their family. So, there is a bond out there. There is clearly a better understanding of each other. And if you look at societies like Australia or United States, even UK to some extent, I think the diaspora has been helpful in promoting that understanding. But I would say there's a contemporary rationale today, which is emerging, which is really of a talent flow globally. And again, this is by the way a very powerful argument for globalization. We are, you know, talents are going to be unevenly located and talents will always be in short supply. So, how do you create a better system for a well-managed, legal, safe, economically productive flow of talent? And I think here the diaspora is the practical manifestation of that kind of knowledge economy, which will have to be serviced by a global talent group. All right, minister, I want to take the chair's prerogative and ask you the last question myself if I can. And I want to ask you about cricket, because we've touched on it a couple of times in the discussion and I know you're a big cricket fan. I know you've been watching the Indian tour of Australia over the past month. So, I want to ask you about something I've always thought, which is that there are a lot of similarities between cricket and diplomacy. And let me make an argument to you. Like diplomacy, cricket is a long game and things are opaque in cricket as in diplomacy. Sometimes a draw can actually be a win and the weather conditions and the state of the pitch are critical. The ball swings in the air and it moves off the seam and sometimes it comes right at your head. And similarly, in foreign policy, the decision-making environment is fluid. And finally, in cricket, it's not just about pace, it's often about leverage. You need cricket and diplomacy require the same qualities, intelligence, skill, patience, discipline, but also toughness. Very few cricket matches are won by sweet reason. Often leverage as well as logic is required, although leverage can take different forms. It might be spin bowling or fast bowling. It might be forceful diplomacy or force. What do you think? I have this sort of visceral belief that cricket-playing countries have an advantage in the diplomatic game because we have this sort of strategic patience that Test Cricket has taught us. What do you think as a lifelong diplomat and a lifelong cricket fan? You know, my colleagues who work with me will tell you that I fall back on cricket analogies every time I get into a difficult situation and I want to explain something. But if I were to sum up my book, I would say my book is about getting the Indian team to understand that playing conditions abroad are not what they used to be. And that you need to prepare for this differently, that the teams you are competing against are also not what they used to be, that they have today different combinations of attack. So watch out for that Shane Wong and prepare for that Glenn McGrath. So, you know, at the end of the day, I would say the similarity I see because at the end, you know, finally it's all about competition. I would cricket this competition, foreign policy diplomacy is also competition. In competition, you do well when you think it through, when you prepare, when you strategize, when you ideally you can game the other side and you know, an occasional sledging I guess is helpful. So, you know, when I get around to it, I'd love to co-author a book with you on how cricket and diplomacy can go together. All right, the Lowy Institute would be happy to publish that book and we'll take that as a commitment from you, minister. Let me say I've really enjoyed our discussion today. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, in my introduction, I spoke very highly of Dr. Jay Shankar, who you can tell I think from the quality of today's discussion that I didn't exaggerate. Congratulations on the publication of your book, Minister of the India Way. Thank you for joining us. This doesn't get you off the hook from visiting us in person though. I look forward to hosting you here at Bly Street, perhaps in 2021. In the meantime, thank you for speaking with us today and good luck for the first test in Adelaide next week. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, it's not only the end of today's event, but the end of the Long Distance Lowy Institute for 2020. It's been quite a ride this year, both for the world and for the Institute, and I'm proud of how my colleagues have adapted to the new conditions. They've produced outstanding research analysis and commentary on events abroad, and they've also created tremendous online events with guests including David Miliband, Samantha Power, Jeff Goldberg, Susan Glasser, Gareth Evans, Julie Bishop, Jake Sullivan, and of course Dr. Jai Shankar. So thank you to my Lowy Institute colleagues, and also thank you to you, our audience, for supporting the Institute this year. We look forward to seeing you all in 2021, hopefully in person here at our headquarters on Bly Street. Thank you and stay well.