EAM’s address at the 04th Kautilya Economic Conclave in New Delhi

Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs: Mr. N.K. Singh, Mr. Trichet, Mr. McGregor, dear friends, it's a great pleasure to be back at the Kautilya Economic Conclave. And let me offer some thoughts to kick off the discussion. And I would begin really by saying that every generation believes that they are seeing unprecedented changes.

In fact, probably every conference believes that they are discussing unprecedented changes. But this time, it's for real.

So, I do want to say that turbulent times may actually be an understatement.

I hope prosperity is not. And I would begin really with the landscape when we speak about turbulent times.

My point would be that by every metric of measuring the international economy, of assessing, in a sense, the state of the world, we are actually going through an extraordinary and intense period of change.

And let me give you a few examples. Let's start with the most basic, which is production. And what we have been saying is that when one-third of the world's manufacturing has shifted to one country, it's had very significant consequences on the international economy.

It has had consequences on the supply chains. It has had consequences in terms of leveraging such a dominant position. But equally important, it has elicited political and, I would say, socioeconomic reactions from many other countries.

And today, in fact, this shift is one aspect of the contradictions which characterize our current world. Let me shift to a second metric, energy. Again, one of the big changes of the last few years has been that the United States, which for decades worried about its exposure to external energy requirements, has not only become self-sufficient, it is actually today a significant exporter of energy and has made that energy exports an important part of its strategic outlook.

Now, just as the U.S. has emerged as a champion of fossil fuels, China has also established itself actually as a leader in renewables. So pretty much any path you take on renewables, finally all roads lead back there as well. Let me shift to something else, data.

When we look today at the models before the world, we have an American model, which is very unrestricted, private enterprise driven. We have a Chinese model, very statist. We have a European model.

In many ways, we have an Indian model. And no doubt there would be others as well. Deriving from that, related to that, if one looks at the role of big tech, now there have always been big companies driving the global economy, but the position, the salience of big tech in today's world really represents a new level of prominence and influence of a few companies.

I come back to trade. And what we have today, starting end-to-end, I said production and therefore concerns about concentration there, then the worries about supply chains and the narrowness and fragility of supply chains. And then now the concern about overexposure or dependence on single markets.

So really end-to-end today, it looks much more anxious than it did a few years ago. A different dimension is connectivity, where we have new routes which are being built, some man-made, some being opened up by nature, and which have really, particularly the polar route, the ability really to revolutionize logistics as we know it currently. And when it comes to finance, what we have seen in the last few years is of course a completely different level of application of sanctions.

We have even seen the seizure of sovereign assets. We have seen the advent of crypto. So as I said, by every metric, even in terms of resources today, the competition for rare earths and critical minerals has become a very major factor in competition between nations.

And what it has also seen in parallel is a return of technology controls which people thought was behind them in the era of globalization. When it comes to mobility, demographic demands are competing today with social reactions to mobility, and there is a tension there which is playing out in different societies. And of course, the nature of weaponry, the nature of war, has today fundamentally changed.

We have seen that in multiple conflicts, starting with Azerbaijan-Armenia, Ukraine-Russia, Israel-Iran. So contactless war, often with standoff weapons, but which can have a very impactful, sometimes even a decisive outcome. These are today the characteristics of this landscape of these turbulent times.

And of course, the sentiment which characterizes these turbulent times is a growth in the opposition to globalization in many parts of the world. Now, it's not just that all of this is happening. All of this is also happening in a very short time frame.

So the intensity of these multiple happenings actually converging on the global economy at the same time, this is today actually setting into motion a paradoxical situation where on the one hand, the very factors which are referred to encourage higher risk-taking.

At the same time, because of the consequence of this, there is a serious effort also to de-risk every facet of both politics and economics. So it's almost like you're raising the height of the trapeze and removing the safety net with each passing day.

And that is really today the state of the international polity. Now, the strategic consequences of this, I think, are quite obvious. We have seen a weakening, sometimes even discarding of international regimes and rules.

We have seen economically that cost may not any longer be the definitive criteria, that ownership or security or reliability, resilience is equally important. We have seen politically that alliances and understandings are being revisited. We've also seen in a few cases, in the cases of really the major polities, that their belief in balance of power is probably much less.

They seem to think they may not need the rest of the world as much as they did before. So if they have margins of power, they're prepared to exercise those margins in pursuit of their policies and actions.

We have therefore seen overall the global needle move much more towards competition and away from compacts.

And that global needle is moving because there is today a tendency to weaponize almost everything. And that if a state has a tool in its toolkit, an instrument to be used, there is much less reticence, particularly on the part of the major powers, to use that. So all in all, yes, times are turbulent to say the least.

And we have therefore this challenge of how do we ensure prosperity. Now every country faces this predicament. Obviously so does India.

But every country faces a different predicament. In the case of the United States, a country which in a sense underwrote the international system as we know it, has really been the harbinger of change. It is not only more assertive, but it has really allowed or encouraged its national interest goals pretty much to drive its approach towards partnerships and cooperation.

In the case of China, I think while they had clearly mastered the old system as we know it, this change perhaps catches them at a time when many of the new concepts, mechanisms, institutions which they were pushing are not yet in place. But clearly what we can see is that the U.S.-China relationship in many ways is going to influence the direction of global politics. In the case of Europe, what was a sweet spot in terms of U.S., Russia, China, U.S., particularly security, Russia, energy, China trade, has actually got turned around and every one of those aspects today has become a challenge.

In the case of East Asia, I think for a geography like ASEAN, being caught between U.S. and China is a very difficult predicament. For those further east, the question marks about both economic and security question marks today are big concerns. In the case of Russia, you can see that the current goals and the future opportunities perhaps are not aligned on the same plane.

But what is, I think in a way, what differentiates India is most of these regions, they are actually defending their interests. They are trying to maintain their positions. Whereas the challenge for India is how to go beyond that.

How do we rise in these turbulent times? Because for us, just defending what we have is simply not good enough. This has caught us at a time in our own history, in our own sort of curve, you can say, where we have to not only internalize and absorb these risks, but find a way of going beyond and continuing with our eyes.

And that, in many ways, actually brings us to the domestic policy choices and governance. And I'm sure many of the other sessions would have discussed it. But I do, from my vantage point, want to make one observation.

Obviously, as a minister, I sit in the Cabinet. In the Cabinet, we have different committees. We have a committee on security.

We have a committee on economic affairs. And we have, of course, the entirety of the Cabinet. But whenever I see any proposal come up to the Cabinet, and I'm using this as a shorthand really for decision-making in this country, I look at it from the vantage point of what I presented to you.

How does it help me to navigate and advance in these turbulent times? So when I see a proposal to deepen manufacturing, when I look at a mission to actually promote advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, for example, or electric vehicles or drones or space, when I look at a project or a set of projects or policies which would take forward infrastructure or which focus on human resources and skills, because, again, this is something which India particularly brings to the table at this point of time, when we look at ease of doing business or ease of living for the common citizen, I want to say from my vantage point, every bit of this actually adds to our comprehensive national power and helps me actually to deal with these turbulent times.

That for India, in many ways, the answer for a more difficult world is not just outside. A large part of that answer is inside. That if we can get our human resources better developed, if we can get our infrastructure moving faster, if we can get manufacturing to deepen more, if we can get new trade flows, because I think given the volatility, the uncertainty that we have seen this year, it is very clear that there is a very strong case really to diversify further the trade account as well.

If we can address energy security, food security, health security, again, partly through a mixture of national capabilities, but by diversifying sources and spreading the risks, this is really today a strategy for India to pursue. And the posture that India adopts, and to my mind, it's a common sense posture, is really to have as many productive relationships as possible, but to make sure that none of them are exclusive and result in the denial of opportunities in other relationships.

So how do we actually practice this multi-alignment or this multiple relationships with different agendas and with different partners, sometimes in different regions?

This is really the external challenge. The internal one, of course, is to improve every dimension of our comprehensive national power. And in my view, we've made good, we've laid a very solid foundation in the last decade.

I think these five years, given the international environment, will test us like it would test every other country in the world. But I think it is a test with which, you know, where we approach it with a degree of confidence, with a degree of firmness, and certainly with a degree of hope that this approach that I have laid before you will give us the results that we need. So thank you again for your attention, and I will go back and join my fellow panelists

New Delhi
October 05, 2025