00:00You know, look, it's an amazing election result.
00:02You know, midterm elections in America are usually a time for course correction.
00:05That's when basically every incumbent president, with very few exceptions, always has a setback.
00:11But a setback like this is almost a record.
00:14It's just been extraordinary.
00:16The ruling party lost both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
00:21You know, it was both the Houses of Congress.
00:23There have been some astonishing changes.
00:25Texas, the governor and the senator, both are Democrats.
00:30No one expected to see such a result.
00:32And then on top of that, you've seen some remarkable results, including the first elected Muslim senator in Michigan,
00:39who is a son-in-law of India.
00:41He's from Egypt originally.
00:43We've got people from various minority communities getting into prominent positions, governors, senators, congresspeople.
00:53And since I'm standing in Tiruvannantapuram, a daughter of Tiruvannantapuram,
00:58has become the mayor of Los Angeles.
01:00So between Los Angeles and New York, the two biggest cities in America, we both have mayors of Indian origin.
01:06It's quite incredible.
01:07So it's in many ways a tribute to the vibrancy of American democracy.
01:12But those in India who are expecting this to have some impact on our relationship with the U.S.
01:17I think are completely mistaken because the way things work in America, on foreign policy and international affairs,
01:24the president has an enormous amount of discretionary power.
01:28He absolutely has no power whatsoever to override Congress on budgetary matters.
01:35He can veto, but they can override once they pass a budget, for example.
01:39It's their budget.
01:40And the president is limited there.
01:42But when it comes to foreign policy, there's pretty much nothing they can do.
01:45If he starts a very ambitious war involving a lot of weapons, a lot of extra expenditure,
01:50Congress, that is the parliament, has the right to restrict his expenditure, curb his expenditure, or approve his expenditure.
01:58But for everything else, he can certainly go ahead, and for up to 60 days, he doesn't even need the
02:04approval of anybody.
02:06So I think that we should understand whether it comes to tariffs, whether it comes to sanctions for buying Russian
02:12oil,
02:12whether it comes to the Iran war itself, whether it comes to any initiative he takes on the Ukraine war.
02:18All of this, he's completely unaffected by this election result.
02:21He can do as he likes.
02:22And in fact, in other presidencies, the last two years of a president's term have often been a time
02:29when a president who has less control over the domestic policy space decides to go ahead and focus on foreign
02:37policy.
02:38And who knows, Mr. Trump may do exactly the same thing.
02:41So when he says that Trump has become an advanced champion, how do you respond to both?
02:46No, no, he's become what they call a lame duck.
02:48That is now, he cannot take any new major legislative initiative, because he will find it very difficult to get
02:55a majority.
02:56Even in the American system, if you want to appoint an ambassador, that ambassador has to be confirmed by the
03:02Senate.
03:02If you want to appoint a Supreme Court judge, that Supreme Court judge has to be confirmed by the Senate.
03:07And the Senate now is in the hands of the Democrats, who are not going to oblige Mr. Trump.
03:12Just as, by the way, the Republicans did not oblige President Obama when he wanted to appoint a Supreme Court
03:18judge in the last year of his term.
03:20They deliberately refused to schedule a hearing.
03:23And that appointment lapsed, the vacancy continued for many months, and then President Trump was able to appoint his person.
03:29So this is the way the American system can work.
03:32But short of that, you can call President Trump a lame duck in those domestic areas, but short of that
03:39kind of thing, he can do what he likes.
03:41He can continue renovating the White House and creating his grand new guilt-edged ballroom, and he can try and
03:49take over the Kennedy Center and rename it for himself,
03:52and all these other things he can still do.
03:53Not everything that the President is able to do is circumscribed by congressional approval.
04:00So he still has a lot of freedom.
04:02The President of the U.S. has a kind of power that in our country is not available constitution to
04:09any one person.
04:10Of course, we have had some very powerful prime ministers who may ignore or disregard the checks and balances written
04:17in the Constitution,
04:17including that of the Cabinet, but in America, it's completely and totally up to him.
04:24And certainly in foreign policy, we will be negotiating with the same Trump administration we already know.
04:31These are the people that we have to deal with, and I think we should have no illusions about how
04:36much has changed for India because of this.
04:38One last thing I would probably say is that for Indians in America, there could be some sort of improved
04:45atmosphere
04:46because things had become very ugly, and especially during this election campaign, the so-called MAGA Republicans,
04:51the Make America Great Again movement, they had been very overtly racist in a lot of their statements and portrayals.
04:59Many Indian friends of mine in America were telling me they were sensing a lot of hostility.
05:06Being brown was seen somehow as a disqualification.
05:09Being talented, contributing well to the American economy through their IT expertise and software expertise and paying good taxes.
05:18All of that is no longer enough.
05:20If you're brown, you don't belong.
05:21Why are you here?
05:22Go back to India.
05:23This sort of atmosphere was there.
05:25Now, the feeling is that because of this election result, a repudiation of that kind of sentiment,
05:32that this overt racism against Indians may come down.
05:37So that may be something we can at least welcome.
05:40Another positive for India could be that you'll have influential voices that are sympathetic to India
05:47in important parts of the American establishment.
05:50For example, my friend Ami Bera, who is the eighth-term congressman and who serves in the Foreign Affairs Committee
05:59of the House,
06:00he could be in line to chair the subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee that deals with India and South
06:07Asia.
06:08It would be very good for us to have an experienced, sympathetic friend in that kind of position.
06:14I will say that if you look at other kinds of things, there will also be some critics.
06:19We have an Indian-American congresswoman called Pramila Jaipal who's in her fourth term.
06:23And she's certainly spoken very critically of India on certain human rights issues, treatment of minorities and so on.
06:30And India should not assume that merely because somebody is Indian, the government will get a free pass.
06:35It won't.
06:36But the country as a whole, I think, has some pleasant outcomes out of this.
06:43He's just said it won't be in the foreign policy domain.
06:46Sir, coming back to India, the SAR professed and Spanish cooperative is going on.
06:50Rahul Gandhi called for a debate.
06:51The government at the same time.
06:52You try to say that let's face each other head on in the parliament.
06:55Let's face each other head on in the parliament.
06:58Good idea.
06:59Yeah, so they have not prorogued the parliament yet.
07:01Let them reconvene the parliament.
07:02And if they reconvene the parliament, Rahul Gandhi's offer to debate stands, I think.
07:12You see, frankly, this was amongst the most outrageous mistakes.
07:16Ordinary public has not fully understood all of these examples of, frankly, bureaucratic and administrative malfeasance that were conducted by
07:26the election commission under Gyanesh Kumar.
07:29And some of these things were objected to by the two other election commissioners as well.
07:33One of them is form six, where you suddenly unilaterally change the form introduced in your declaration, which is not
07:39authorized under the rules and laws of the country.
07:42So it was a totally unacceptable thing that was done.
07:45This is what the opposition was complaining about.
07:47And we were treated as if we were somehow not.
07:49Now even the Supreme Court has said this should not have been done.
07:52And they've agreed to change it.
07:54And now they're saying you can, for example, form six is supposed to be filed by a new voter.
07:58What about all the old voters who have been wrongly deleted?
08:01Now they're also allowed to file form six.
08:03It's totally chaotic.
08:05Then there is also form seven.
08:07Form seven is a form that you or I can fill to object to somebody being on the line.
08:12If you can say, you know, my neighbor has been given a place in the voting register, but we know
08:17he is not an Indian.
08:18For example, that is the form that you fill form seven.
08:21Now, under this election commission, bulk filling of form sevens with thousands of names has been permitted, including in states
08:30like West Bengal.
08:31And as a result, on the basis of mere suspicion, a large number of people are denied the right to
08:36vote.
08:37These are the kinds of things that we've been trying to point out calmly, reasonably for some time.
08:41And sadly, it has not been heeded by some people.
08:45But what has been done by the election commission now to roll back some of their mistakes, that is one
08:54of the things we asked for.
08:55We wanted not just Mr. Gyanesh Kumar's resignation.
08:59We wanted very much that the electoral process under the SIR should be reversed, that you should actually end up
09:09with these wrong decisions cancelled and their consequences for innocent Indian citizens to be reversed.
09:16And now, it's not just enough to appeal.
09:19I think what you should do is, if you feel that somebody should not have the right to vote, you
09:24also have an obligation as election commission to tell them why.
09:27You can't just cut names like this.
09:29And as you know, we've had an extraordinary number of 130 million votes cut from the register.
09:34So, for all of these reasons, what the election commission did was wrong.
09:39We have been saying it is wrong.
09:40And the hearings in the Supreme Court are clearly demonstrating step by step that we were right and they were
09:46wrong.
09:47So, the last question on Agnipat scheme reversed.
09:49What we have not said?
09:50Well, if you go back on my tweets and so on, I have been critical of the Agnipat scheme.
09:55At that time, I also have friends in the army.
09:57I've also been a very strong supporter of the army.
10:00Right from my UN peacekeeping days when I worked with the Indian army and with other armies around the world.
10:05And I saw the quality of ours was as good as the best in the world.
10:08So, I have been an admirer of the Indian army throughout it.
10:11I believe it incarnates some of the best standards that our country is capable of and the highest values, including
10:17secular cooperation amongst people of all faiths and everything else.
10:21So, I was shocked when Agnipat came.
10:23I talked to some friends in the army and they were also not very happy about it, including some retired
10:28officers.
10:29And I also said at that time, why are we doing this?
10:33You know, there are important things that are worth paying for.
10:37We all understood the real motivation was to reduce the pension burden on the government.
10:42And fiscally, that makes sense.
10:44But you don't damage an institution like the army.
10:48It is far, far too precious for our country.
10:50Now, it's taken them four years to realize that the original idea was bad, that you can't bring people in
10:56on a contract basis.
10:56It's not a contract job.
10:58Serving your country is a, you're putting your life on the line.
11:01You don't do it for a short contract.
11:03You don't do it without any prospects in the future.
11:05You don't do it without some guaranteed security.
11:08Now, this is normal common sense.
11:09We all heard this at that time.
11:11But this government stubbornly went ahead with that policy.
11:14Now, four years later, they're reversing it and they're making the army announce the reversal.
11:19Whereas, in fact, it is the civilians who have taken this decision.
11:23Anyway, I welcome the change.
11:25I believe we must preserve and protect the army.
11:29Yes, there will be a strong fiscal burden for our country.
11:34But I believe that preserving the army is in the national interest.
11:38And therefore, we will have to manage government finances better and differently.
11:44But it should not be at the expense of the Indian army.
11:48Jai Hind, Jai Jawa.
