New Delhi, 25 Oct: Bharat has become the agenda setter on global issues and the country’s stand that war should be resolved through diplomacy and dialogue is in consonance with its civilisational ethos, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar said on Wednesday.
Dhankhar made the comments while addressing students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here.
“You are living in an era where Bharat’s influence is felt beyond its borders. I have experienced it during my three visits abroad and interaction with global leaders. India is looked at very differently. India defines its own policies and its own interest and the world takes note of what India does, how India will do and what India’s standing is,” he said.
“India is being looked upon as a problem solver for the challenges of our time. Imagine the strength of our diplomacy, we have taken a stand that suits our country the best. The stand that we have taken with respect to war (resolution) by diplomacy (and) dialogue… is in consonance with our civilisational ethos. Bharat has become the agenda setter on global issues today,” he added.
The Vice President noted that a decade ago, India was counted as one of the fragile five — those five countries that were a burden for the economies of the world.
Now, Dhankhar said, India is poised to become the third-largest economy in the world by 2030.
“In September 2022, India became the world’s fifth-largest economy, in the process overtaking the UK and France. All indications are there (that) by the turn of the decade, by 2030, we are poised to be the third-largest global economy, overtaking Japan and Germany. This is because our human resource is very skilled,” he said.
Corruption in democracy is the common man’s greatest enemy, he underlined.
He said power corridors have been cleared of liaison agents, middlemen and power brokers who used to leverage decision-making, he said.
Dhankhar cautioned that there are several forces peddling false narratives to taint and tarnish the image of Bharat and its institutions, including IITs.
He said students from varied backgrounds come to IITs on the basis of merit but a different impression is given to the outside world by such forces.
“You are the real proof of it and therefore it is the bounding duty of all of us, particularly students like you, to decimate and neutralise such kinds of narratives which are pernicious and do not reflect the ground reality,” he said.
“For some strange reason, which I can’t rationalise, growth is indigestible to some. Some people can go to the extent and say that Pakistan has a better Hunger Index than India. Imagine how far they can go,” he added. (PTI)
IIT alumni, being at the helm of technology and managerial affairs in leading organisations, should make sure that nobody can malign democratic institutions of this country, the Vice President said. PTI