00:00You know, I would take your question in a way, in three parts.
00:06India-China, India-America and India vis-a-vis China-America.
00:13India-China, I mean, in a way, if you look at it, we are the only two countries with more than a billion people.
00:21We have a certain civilizational history and, you know, all of that peopleтАж people know.
00:27And today we are on a track of, I would say, economic recovery or rejuvenation.
00:34And there is no question anybody who's predicting, you know, if you are predicting developments of this century,
00:41I mean, definitely you cannot leave India and China out of that equation.
00:46We are very, very prominent, very key almost in a way, I would say.
00:51But here is the challenge for us, which is that we are neighbors.
00:57We have unresolved boundary issue.
01:05There are, you know, they have been rising. We have also been rising.
01:10So, you know, if both, if two neighboring countries, two large neighboring countries rise next to each other in the same time frame,
01:21it's not easy. There are very, very few historical parallels for that.
01:25So, managing this, you know, double rise, you can say, that too in proximity,
01:33you know, if one was in some other part of the world, it's a different issue.
01:36I think these will have, will require a lot of skill and a lot of deftness and diplomacy.
01:44And the truth is our capabilities will change, our influence will change, our ambitions will change.
01:51You know, both of us will naturally want to be bigger and more visible and more effective in the world.
01:58So how do we get an equilibrium in our relationship?
02:01I think this is one of the big issues for us and for them.
02:06On India and America, I would say, you know, starting with President Clinton's visit in 2000,
02:15we put, you know, we broke out of that American mindset of India-Pakistan hyphenation.
02:25And since then, from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden,
02:31actually you will see India-US has grown steadily all this time.
02:37I would particularly, as someone, I've been dealing with this relationship for more than 40 years,
02:43I would particularly say last 10 years, and I'm not saying it because I, you know,
02:48I'm part of a politically part of the government now, but the last 10 years,
02:53see a lot of the ideological hang-ups that we had vis-a-vis US,
02:59we were able to put that behind and forge ahead much more confidently.
03:03Then, because a lot of the constraints were also self-imposed on our side.
03:08So I do think today that there is a very, very strong convergence between India and US.
03:16It is strategic. It is political. It is very deeply technology driven.
03:22You know, when I look at the future of technology and what it means for global balances of power,
03:28I think it's certainly an area, you know, a domain which will be very important.
03:33If you look at the people-to-people relationship, the size of the community out there, that has changed.
03:41So I'm very confident that that relationship will do very well. It won't be automatic.
03:46I mean, beech beech mein kuch problems ho sakti. But I am confident we will always be able to deal with those issues.
03:53Now you have US, China, you know, clearly there's a very sharp rivalry between them today.
04:02So these are calculations that they have made about each other.
04:08I think where we are concerned, we have to make calculations from our interest point of view,
04:13that we have to look at the world situation and say, OK, you know, what are the decisions,
04:18what are the choices or what are the issues on which, you know, my going, taking this step will help me in what manner.
04:27And I think that's that's really what we would like to do.
04:31That at the end of the day, you know, if we are looking at a at a foreign policy,
04:38which has a very sharp sense of what is our national interest, but also a sense of what is global interest.
04:44I would definitely say we would make those calculations and take those decisions and create, you know, the right partnerships which will serve our interest.
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