Good evening everybody. It's a real pleasure to be with you all today. The topic is 'A World in Transition'. So, what I'd like to do is to make one point about the world in transition and perhaps another one about what India is doing about the world in transition. And that could set us up for a conversation because I think I usually find that it's far more, it's far more entertaining or far more, I would say, engaging really to talk to people instead of just holding forth.

Now, in terms of the world in transition, I'm sure all of you would agree that we seem to be passing really through extraordinary times. I mean, just think about it. A few years ago, we would have all assumed that serious wars involving major powers were probably out of question. If it happened, it would happen for a short while. So, when you think that there's a war going on in Ukraine, which is now in its fifth year, and you have today a conflict in Iran and the Gulf, which is shorter, hopefully will end sooner, but nevertheless, it's not something most of us would have foreseen just a little while ago.

Now, two significant wars going on simultaneously. And this is followed by, what's been happening after the October 7th attack on Israel in Gaza. The whole last year, the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. And in fact, on a lot of other conflicts which don't necessarily make the news. Sudan is an example. And then if one looks at the economic side, very deep worries about supply chains. And then, you know, once you start obsessing about the supply side, then you start worrying about the demand side because market access becomes very unpredictable in an era where tariff rates become very difficult to predict. Then you look at the technology side and, people worry about what the era of AI portends. In fact, not just AI; drones, space, underwater.

And, the combination of all of this, and this is the dramatic side. There is also the everyday happenings in the world. How large parts of the world are falling behind in terms of sustainable development goals, in terms of their ability to meet the needs of education, sanitation, health, livelihoods. And you ask yourself, why has this all suddenly come upon us? And the answer probably is that we are actually today sitting on 80 years of pent-up change in the international system.

80 years where production centers have changed, consumption patterns have changed, where the relative weight of countries, societies, regions vis-a-vis each other have changed. Where there's actually been, after decolonization, once countries became free, many of them displayed their ability to manage their economic futures much better, obviously, than under colonization. And once an economic rebalancing happened, it was only a question of time before a political one happened. And when that happened, there were cultural assertions which accompanied it.

So you put it all together and, in fact, if we look back, every time in recent history that kind of pressure built up on the global system, either it would lead to a very major conflict, which is why we had two world wars in a century within decades of each other, or you would have some other form of significant change. And in a disaggregated way, because we tend to think of all these events in an isolated manner. There's something going on in the Gulf, there's something in Ukraine, there's something in Africa. You know, the economic stuff is different, the political stuff is different, the military one is different.

But if you put it, connect the dots, what you have is really an aggregate picture of a global order which has been really feeling the bottom-up pressure of accumulated changes over multiple decades. And that is now beginning to express itself. It is also expressing itself, as it has done in the past, that whatever bodies the world had decided would arbitrate among nations are no longer able to do so very effectively. So, if you look really at this decade starting with the COVID, looking at Ukraine, looking at Gaza, now what's happening in Iran, Gulf, actually, the United Nations has been pretty much a bystander.

And again, there is a precedent for it. The League of Nations also in its own time found itself overtaken, though of course, I don't wish to draw that parallel too far. So, that's my first point to you, that when we use the term 'a world in transition', it's probably something of an understatement. We are seeing a degree of turbulence, of volatility, of unpredictability, which probably most of us have not experienced in our lives. We would have read about it at some point of time in history, and that is something that we all have to deal with.

My second point, which is: how does a country like India, since I speak for India here, how are we responding to it? What are we doing, obviously, to advance our own interest, but also in terms of our contribution to global good here. How do we position ourselves and how do we strategize in such a turbulent world? And I have a set of, I would say, a set of points which constitute our elements of our foreign policy in responding to this world of change. And I'll run through them quickly so that that would then set us up for the conversation.

One, as I said, in very, very uncertain, unpredictable economic circumstances, India is actually today a very significant contributor to overall global economic growth. The IMF estimates that in this current year, if you look at total economic growth in the world, India would contribute 17% to that, which would, I think, make us the second biggest contributor.

The second, in a world again, and you know, I've spelled out some features, one which I did not, but which I believe will be very profoundly impactful, would actually be demography. That demographic changes in the world in the next decade, perhaps even less, are going to have very dramatic consequences, not just on their own societies, but on the global economy as well. So, my second point actually relates to the mismatch between supply and demand when it comes to talent and skills. That where there is a demand, the talent and skills do not exist or do not exist in adequate numbers. And one challenge today for the global economy, but for global society, and I would even argue for politics, is how does one ensure that? Because mobility and to some extent migration have political consequences as we can all see.

And here, the contribution of India in terms of preparing a global workforce, in creating a pool of skills and talent which is available not just to the Indian economy but to the global economy, is a second point I would flag.

The third, and Jamaica is a good example, we are living in a world where we can see there is, there are more and more extreme climate events with greater frequency and greater impact. You've all gone through Hurricane Melissa. And the question then arises, when such events happen, who responds and how do you respond? How effectively do you respond?

And the truth is, we are actually seeing less international cooperation, less collective efforts even actually as these events intensify and become more serious. And what we have tried to do is really, one, because we are at the, you know, we are geographically and economically in a situation where extreme climate events are affecting us very profoundly. So, we have taken it very seriously, we've prepared ourselves, but we've also created capacities which are useful to the world. So, when you had an event like Hurricane Melissa, we were able in our own way to contribute to it and contribute to it with some innovative solutions, one part of which today I formally handed over to Prime Minister Holness. So, how do you create very compact, deployable medical responses which are very easily usable in difficult situations?

A few years ago, we were facing something much more sustained, much more global, much more serious, and that was the COVID. The COVID too was an example to demonstrate relevance, that you had in India a country which was able to use its ability to manufacture vaccines on scale and not just manufacture it on scale, but become an important global source and an important global source which cared enough about the world to share vaccines with countries who otherwise probably would not have got those vaccines in the timeline in which they did. One of those countries incidentally was Jamaica.

Now, I spoke about the world in transition, the fact that the relative weight of countries have changed, and certainly one of the issues that has arisen is, are the interests of what we call the Global South? The Global South as countries which have been decolonized, which are today independent, but who still struggle in terms of the international order to get reasonable opportunities to take forward their own growth and modernization. And as it is natural, when you have a number of countries with similar challenges and predicament, how to put that together? How to make them a collective voice, again, is an important task. And here, in the last few years, India has made a political contribution by organizing regular meetings of what are called Voice of Global South, so that the countries of the Global South are able collectively to take a better position, set themselves up for better bargains, better outcomes in the international order.

At an … on the economic stage, I referred to the mismatch and the need really to prepare a global workforce, but you have then the reality of politics. A reality of politics today which is very sensitive to the movement of people. And so, when if people don't move in response to economic needs, obviously the only other solution is that the economic tasks move to where the people are. And here too, we have a phenomenon coming up called Global Capability Centers, which is where big corporates or businesses take the tasking out to where that talent is. And this, to my mind, is actually going to be a trend which will increase in terms of the globalized economy. And India has in many ways emerged as a leader of the GCC economy. At the moment, we have about 1,800 GCCs whose exports are close to about 70 billion dollars every year and it's growing at a very, very rapid rate.

Of course, when we speak of a turbulent global economy and a very much more protected one with uncertain, constantly changing tariff situations, there is a value to Free Trade Agreements, higher value to Free Trade Agreements than there was before. And where India is concerned, we are actually today rapidly concluding Free Trade Agreements with major economic players because we do believe that in this kind of economic situation which the world is moving into, countries with Free Trade Agreements or bilateral trade agreements, those who have the maximum number of agreements would be the best advantage to further their prospects.

So, in the last few years, we've actually done FTAs with the European Union, with the United Kingdom, with Australia, New Zealand, with UAE and Oman, with Mauritius, and we are today actively negotiating with countries and groupings in this part of the world.

And finally, of course, all of us need to be, ideally, responsive to developments in our own neighborhood, because it's your neighborhood. And in our case, every one of these disruptions I spoke about, whether it was COVID, whether it was Ukraine, whether it's now what's happening in Iran and the Gulf, they've had very severe consequences on our neighborhood. And we know that many of our neighboring countries don't have the size, scale, or the resilience to necessarily meet those challenges.

So, when COVID happened, actually, we were obviously the earliest and the primary source of vaccines for them. When the Ukraine conflict erupted, there was an energy disruption, there was a fertilizer shortage, there was a food problem because Ukraine was a major exporter of wheat. And in our own neighborhood, some countries, notably Sri Lanka, went into a very deep economic crisis. And actually, we stepped forward with a very major financial package which was significantly bigger than what the IMF eventually gave them. And ours was unconditional as contrasted with what the IMF did.

And today, we are again facing that situation. When fighting broke out in the Gulf on 20th February, a lot of our neighbors obviously, and we included, we faced acute fuel, gas, and oil shortages. And we had the ability, the resilience, the networking to address that, and to a great degree, I think, we felt an obligation also to help our neighbors. So, many of them actually have gained by the fact that India has been willing, even in these very difficult situations, to share its energy resources with them.

So, I mentioned these because to me, one logical consequence of a world in transition. Because a world in transition, unfortunately, looks like it's a much more self-centered world. It's a world where in many ways concern for the global commons, a desire to do global good is less. We are looking at a world where there is an instinctive desire to de-risk, a natural tendency to hedge, where countries tend to look out for themselves in a somewhat extreme manner.

And it's good to set out a different model, a different pattern of behavior, to show that national interest and global good are not contradictory. That you can contribute to the world even while looking after yourself. And that is really the Indian reaction, in a way, to the world in transition. So, perhaps with those remarks, I could come back with my coffee and we could begin the conversation. Thank you.

Kingston
May 06, 2026