SPEECHES / STATEMENTS 

PM’s remarks at HT Summit 2008

November 21, 2008, New Delhi

“In the past four years your annual Summit has repeatedly focused public attention on the challenges of development India is facing and the opportunities before us in this new 21st century. Four years ago I have said to you that one of the great experiments of the 20th century was the struggle of the Indian people to seek their social and economic salvation within the framework of a plural and liberal democracy. This in my view will remain the great human experiment of the present 21st century as well.

Nowherelse in the world you find a billion plus people trying to transform their economy and the society in the framework of the functioning democracy committed to full respect for fundamental human freedoms and respect for the rule of law. I had said also then that the “idea of unity in diversity”, and the great Indian philosophical tradition that inspired it, remain our great inheritance that we would like the entire world to embrace. The notion of cooperative pluralism and respect for diversity that is the basis of our democracy must also be the basis of global governance in the 21st century if it is to inspire universal trust and confidence.

People everywhere seek well-being and sustainable livelihoods, but they also seek fundamental freedoms. People do want jobs, people want education, people want housing and health care. But people also want to live in open societies and open economies. People throughout history has sought freedom from tyranny in all its manifestations. They wish to be governed by the rule of law. This has been the human endeavour in the past and I suggest to this august audience that it will remain so in the years to come.

India’s success in transforming the lives of its people as a liberal and plural democracy, a free society and a free economy, will I believe provide hope for millions around the world. We may have paid a price in terms of economic growth and efficiency, but we have gained as a free people. Let us never belittle our achievements nor our ambitions in this regard, and certainly not our struggle.

The world also has a stake in the success of the great Indian experiment. The world will watch India’s efforts to rid its people of chronic poverty, ignorance and disease within the framework of a democratic polity. The success of this Indian experiment will remain not just our national ambition for the new century. It will also be the global ambition.

At your Summit in 2006 I had reminded you of what Sir Winston Churchill had once said, at the end of the Second World War. ‘the empires of the future will be the empires of the mind.’ In saying so, he recognized the great importance of knowledge in determining the destinies of nations. The intellectual, cultural, social, economic and political empowerment of individuals and societies is the basis on which the modern world will be constructed. This defines our second ambition for the coming century. India will not only be the land of a free people, but will also be a land of a knowledge-empowered people.

My greatest ambition for the coming century or the present century is to see a fully educated and empowered India. The light of knowledge must touch every child, male or female and empower every one of our citizens. I have this dream for our people because that was my dream as a young boy in a distant village in the erstwhile State of Punjab. I stand before you today because the light of knowledge has empowered me. I cannot think of any other reason. Like millions of Indians I come from a family of modest means. I lived in a dusty village with no doctor around, no school, no electricity, no paved roads, no safe drinking water facility.

But it was the burning desire to learn, to be educated, that has brought me here to these glittering halls from that distant village without hope. It was scholarships and fair selection that educated me. It was a free society and a land of opportunity that gave me opportunities for self-expression and self-advancement. My dreams for myself have been realized in my own lifetime because my country has made me. At your Summit in 2007 I said to you that it is up to all of us to build the foundations that can help us realize our vast latent potential for development and social change.

Our challenges and our tasks present themselves to us everyday. It is up to us to exert pressure on our system to deliver results. We must improve the quality of our processes of governance, we must improve the quality of our educational system. We must improve the public delivery system, especially in health care, sanitation, drinking water, education and public transport. We must build a more efficient and competitive society. We must learn to respect the spirit of adventure and enterprise in our entrepreneurs. We must provide an even better environment for individual enterprise to flower and to flourish. These have been the focus of our Government’s policies these four and a half years.

The global economy is today, going through choppy waters. However, we can and we will survive this crisis and emerge stronger if we have the imagination, sense of unity and the will to work together as a united nation. Competitive politics must not be allowed to divide our people on the basis of religion, caste or region. At home and globally we seek an inclusive growth process. Our century I sincerely believe will be shaped by how we respond to the global economic crisis today. If nations look only inwards and imagine that they can solve their problems on their own, they will fail and fall. The world has become more integrated and inter-dependent. In both good and bad, in prosperity and peril, in opportunity and crisis we must recognise the new inter-dependencies of nations and no nation is an island into itself.

That is why at the recent G-20 Summit last week I urged world leaders to recognise these inter-dependencies and our stake in our collective future. We need a global safety net so that the poor of the world do not pay a price for the profligacy of the rich, and the delinquency of a few. Global problems require global solutions. This is the most important lesson of the past century for the present century. But global institutions of governance must be made more inclusive and more representative. The voice of the developing world must be heard in the high councils of global decision-making.

The message of the economic and social crisis now gripping the world is also that extremist ideologies, political or economic, have harmful consequences. The idea of India, based on the rejection of extremes, respect for diversity and pluralism and the acceptance of the Middle Path, offers new pathways to progress for humanity in distress. When nations have tilted to extremes they have either hurt themselves or harmed the world at large. To regain balance they have always had to return to the Middle Path of social and economic progress. I do believe that such a pragmatic approach to policy can help us deal with the challenges that our world faces today.

My call for moderation is not a rejection of boundless ambition. In some areas of human conduct such ambition is a necessary part of progress. Last week the Indian tricolour landed on the Moon. I salute with pride our space scientists and engineers. A few weeks earlier the global community agreed to recognise India’s status as a nuclear power. I salute with pride our nuclear scientists and engineers. I also salute with pride the political leaders and policy makers who over the years have invested in these ambitious programmes of atomic energy and space.

Both achievements, on the nuclear and space fronts, come more than half a century after we as a nation set ourselves ambitious goals in the most advanced fields of scientific endeavour. When Jawaharlal Nehru, Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai set for themselves the goals of tapping nuclear energy and exploring space, ours was a much poorer country than we are today. A less developed nation. Many mocked them for their ambition. Our achievement today mocks the cynicism of the non-believers. Such ambition must be commended and encouraged. It is the kind of ambition that spurs human progress and widens human imagination.

I would like to see similar ambition in ridding our country of poverty, ignorance and disease. I would like to see similar ambition in liberating the minds of our people from the deadweight of prejudice and bigotry. I would like to see similar ambition in our effort to educate and feed every child. I would like to see similar ambition in providing safe drinking water and electricity to every home across this vast land of ours. I would like our women to be equal partners in sharing the fruits of social and economic progress. I would like to see similar ambition in our endeavour to secure a neighbourhood of peace and prosperity.

No goal is impossible, no hurdle, I believe, is insurmountable. But if we set our sights low, no achievement is laudable. While celebrating our achievement in space, let us reflect on its lessons for us on Earth. The moon landing was the fulfilment of a vaulting ambition. It was the result of years and years of hard work. Above all, it was the fruit of cooperative enterprise. Hundreds of Indians, dedicated Indians – not divided by their religion, not divided by their region, not divided by their language or caste to which they belong, but united by their commitment to hard work and passion for a scientific adventure that made the realisation of the dream possible.

Who looks at our nuclear scientists or space engineers in terms of their narrow social identities or their religious beliefs? Who asks them what their caste is or to which region or State they belong to? Who asks what their language is or region is? We only ask what their achievement is. It is their work that defines them. Why cannot we look at each of our citizens therefore in terms of their contribution to the promotion of good neighbourliness, to promotion of communal harmony, to concern for the well-being of marginalised sections of society, to peace and progress around us? Is this an ambitious goal? Am I asking for too much when I ask each one of you to stop identifying yourself in terms of how the past has shaped you, but do so in terms of how you can and are shaping the future? For the hundreds of women and men who put the Indian tricolour on the Moon the past was no guide to the future they made possible in our present.

Let no prejudice from the past shape, nor a hurdle in the present thwart our ambitions for the future. We should be firm in our resolve to make the future happen. That should be the message of your Summit this year.”