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The Asia Society and the Council on Foreign
Relations have been very understanding interlocutors for India in
America and all of us appreciate the great efforts that the two organizations
are making to enhance our understanding of each other. After a very
effective tenure in Delhi, Frank Wisner has, in true Indian tradition,
assumed a new avatar as our Track-II envoy to the United States. Mr.
Platt and Mr. Bouton know India intimately and would be prime candidates
for honorary Indian citizenship. The world's largest and the world's
richest democracies have been described by Dennis Kux as estranged
democracies. I have not been happy with that expression for I do not
believe that we were ever estranged. We have had differences. But
our shared commitment to representative democracy and the rule of
law, our common values of human rights and secularism, our convergent
interests in science and technology and of course the fact that America
enjoys Most Favored Nation status among our educated youth have all
combined to ensure that the differences do not come in the way of
dialogue and discussion. I have been personally privileged to be a
witness to history. I recall vividly the Indira Gandhi - Ronald Reagan
meeting nineteen years ago that imparted a whole new dimension to
our bilateral relationship. And with my late husband, I experienced
the extraordinarily warm and gracious hospitality of President Reagan
and Vice President Bush in 1985. It was that visit, incidentally,
that brought IT to India and put Bangalore on the world's IT map...
India is in the midst of three profound transformations - economic,
political and social. We are moving from an inward-looking economy
to an outward-looking economy–We are moving from a centralized
polity dominated by an all-powerful government in New Delhi to a more
decentralized polity ...We are moving from a society in which political
and social power has been concentrated in a few groups to a society
which is seeing unprecedented empowerment of the traditionally disadvantaged
...The contemporary problems we face, the challenges we now confront
are, in many ways, the offshoots of these three transformations. Economic
liberalization has clearly brought benefits to India. We have sustained
an economic growth rate of almost 6.5% during the turbulent 1990s.
We have managed our external finances very prudently. Inflation has
been kept in check. |
