 Let us start with what has been happening when it comes to India-China relationship in last three years. Lot of hostilities were there, especially when it comes to the border issues. Do you think this visit will have any impact on that? I think it will because the reason behind this informal summit is to see that such things didn't happen again because Dhoklam last year in the summer exposed the lack of a framework which can prevent such incidents on the border, rather the line of actual control. And smaller scale standoffs also happened before, you know, patrols including to each other's claimed line and so on. Therefore, it will have certainly some impact even though it was a so-called agenda-less summit more about understanding than about specific issues, but surely several specific issues will be affected by this. So as you have pointed out, this was more or less agenda-less visit and an informal visit it was called. There were news that Modi and the Chinese counterpart are meeting at least six times in 24 hours. So, what were the basic issues that they were even discussing when it comes to this agenda-less informal meeting? Because India has been closely moving towards US when it comes to its international ties. So, will it have any impact on India-China relationship? Yes, you know, out of the six, four were just the two-some meetings with interpreters and two were delegation-level meetings, which means that they had things to discuss part by point. Therefore, only name it was agenda-less meeting and lot of preparation did precede this. Now and the, you know, many commentators have talked about to reset India-China relations. Actually it's not about resetting specific issues or these relations. I would say that, you know, we have to have a rethinking of the frameworks governing relations of such countries and countries in general today after the, you know, Donald Trump leadership came to power and several developments, Brexit and, you know, US-Russia relations going sour and so on. Now today these two countries realize that world is moving in the direction of a different power structure where a big, small, medium, all countries matter. Therefore, the balance of power realist approach which was governing our relations, particularly during the last three years. And especially when market is defining everything because India is one of the biggest markets in the world. That's right. One and two, that if you find some challenge from one's power, you move to another power. India went closer to US. Now that kind of politics is outdated. You have to have relations with all countries and you cannot be over dependent on any country and be, you need peace for an environment of development and trade and trade has to be equitable. You can't have just US dominating the international trade or even China replacing US. And this is why India-China economic relations were a big issue. One of the issues in this summit, for example, we have an imbalance and the imbalance grew during the last three years, you see. Therefore, we have to have a different strategy so that India uses Chinese capital and China also opens its market for Indian products, pharmaceuticals, agricultural goods, many other things, not just getting coal, iron ore from India and selling to India all the modern electronic goods and things like that. That kind of trade has to change. And Chinese investments should be utilized in India to modernize Indian economy and produce modern goods that can sell all over the world, including in China. You mentioned the Belt and Road Initiative. You see, Belt and Road Initiative is both economic and political and cultural. This is the old Silk Road revived now and the political point was the sticking point between India and China on Belt and Road. If China had consulted India before signing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, they could have come to some agreement that, okay, you have some project, but you announce that this is Indian territory or disputed territory. Before doing that, before taking India into confidence in one of the trips, Xi Jinping announced this big project, which is now a 60 billion US dollar project, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. But all the South Asian neighbors of India have welcomed and have joined the Belt and Road Initiative. Some specific projects also, which are ostensibly part of Belt and Road Initiative, which fall, for example, in the BCIM Economic Corridor, Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar, Economic Corridor in the East. Now India is participating, but they have agreed that it should not be called Belt and Road Initiative project. It should be BCIM project. So slowly they have to understand how to respect each other's concerns and sensitivities and I'm glad that is the basic thing. You know, this informal summit has focused on mutual respect and mutual respect that has a sense of other parties' concerns, aspirations and I think they don't quote Manmohan Singh of course, but Manmohan Singh used to say, the world is big enough to accommodate the aspirations of the two rising powers. You actually pointed out that how even small and the medium-sized countries also need to be brought on board when you're discussing these issues. When it comes to India's relationship with its neighbors, it was getting bad in past three years, be it Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China was having more influence over these countries. Do you think this summit will have any impact on that? And also because in South Asia, China and India are two biggest powers. So what will be the political configurations taking place in South Asia when it comes to the meeting between the two counterparts? It will have a lot of effect on India and her South Asian neighbors and I would very much hope that Prime Minister Modi takes some initiative about Pakistan where the new understanding with China will be a positive factor and today also there was news that the two parties agreed, India and China agreed to have a joint development plan in Afghanistan. That is the best and they should bring Pakistan into that. So Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China and Iran, they should have a joint strategy of development and they should urge EU and US to join that kind of framework rather than having competing strategies. Similarly, in Nepal and Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, India and China should not be competing for influence. They should be partnering for helping these countries which have either ethnic problem or economic problem and so security is now very intimately connected with ethnic aspirations as well as economic issues, environment issues, energy issues and of course both the countries have agreed to work more closely on countering terrorism. I hope on that also they have a new perspective going into the roots of terrorism, what forces give rise to youth joining terrorist groups and take up arms. Therefore this understanding will help India to have new resources together with China and also independently, both to work in Nepal, Myanmar, all the countries throughout South Asia. Therefore now Sark should be revived. You know China is an observer, China, Russia, US, they are all observers and we should take advantage of this new understanding to take Sark out of the freeze and India-Pakistan relations should now be altered so that we have a revival of the Sark activity. I mean do you think that it will also act as an influencing block when it comes to the global politics if these countries come together? Now the block politics is a thing of the past and you have new multilateral cooperative organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS, even EU is a fragmented organization really. Now so new economic regional organizations, ASEAN is the good example of this, which now defines globalization in terms of local interest and the global and regional interest being harmonized. Not just US dictated or EU dictated global interest being imposed on the region and then smaller countries or individual countries like the situation which led to the trade war between US and China. We need multilateral organizations as the mediators to really harmonize local interest and global interest. So that is the model and a block influencing global politics. I think that era is gone. But for example BRICS, should BRICS follow the agenda of G7 or G77? I used to always ask this question ever since BRICS came. But last two summits Goa and the last one was in Hainal. We had, I was disappointed, BRICS was moving in the direction of G7 terms and that is not what we wanted. We hoped that India, China, South Africa and Brazil, if not Russia, at least these four countries would really take up issues which will democratize the world order. In the statements that was reported by the Foreign Secretary today in the press conference, I was pleased to read one sentence that both countries would work for an open democratic multipolar participant world order. Even multipolar has to be redefined. It's not the old five being replaced by a new five. India, China being admitted to the G7. It is many, many countries standing creating a new platform where small, medium, big populace are territorially big countries, they have dignified and equitable role. That's all the time we have for today and as these things proceed and as India and China interact more, we will be coming back to you on such issues once again. Thanks a lot for giving us your time, sir. Thank you. Thank you for watching NewsClick.