All countries, including China, should be open and transparent in sharing information: Hillary Clinton

India and the United States did a great and quick job in bringing vaccines to the market compared to other countries. But we have to have global responses to curb it, and every country, especially China, has to be more open and transparent in sharing accurate information in real-time.”
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Further adding on it, she said that it is true for all of us, “but because of the difficulties we had getting accurate, timely information out of China, they have to understand they cannot continue to hoard or guard information that the rest of the world needs”.

Clinton also admitted that there was a collapse of public health infrastructure in the US and India. “The final thing that I would say is part of what was shown is the collapse of a lot of the public health infrastructure and in our country, when the emergency hit we didn’t have enough oxygen and ICU beds…patients (were) out in corridors waiting to be tended to.”

“So, we need to be smarter about how we prepare for what could happen again to have enough affordable access to the care that people are going to be eating. But I think the world should come together and try to cooperate about how we’re going to prepare for whatever might come next,” she stated.

Former First Lady and Secretary of State of the US and philanthropist Hillary Clinton during her India visit and interacted with faculty and students was joined by senior officials of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).

Clinton emphasised the need to take climate action and adopt sustainable alternate solutions in our day-to-day lives. Citing an example from her visit to a salt pan farm, where women are using solar-powered pumps, she expressed confidence in India’s ability to meet the alternate energy needs.

She said, “Alternative clean energy is India’s future and it would not burden the country but instead, it can reduce costs and generate more income for the communities. Today, India is well-positioned to adopt clean energy to achieve economic growth but it requires organisation from the public sector, the private sector and civil society. So, with creative thinking, scientific know-how through institutions like IITGN, bringing down the costs of such alternatives, and decentralising, I really believe that the opportunity for India in being a leader in clean energy is so dramatically available.”

Clinton also stressed that sexism and misogyny are still around, and sadly it has become quite virulent on social media, which has become “a new challenge that we have not confronted before”.

She also encouraged girls and women to develop enough resilience and support each other in dealing with adversity. “In the workplace it’s important that other women support women who are being adversely affected…it’s important that all of us as women in professional or public life, realise that sexism and misogyny are still around and sadly, it has become quite very virulent on social media. And social media has been a terrible influence on how women in the public arena are viewed and treated. So, we need to be especially resilient, but we also need to be supporting each other in the workplace, because there are new pressures in the social media world that we’ve never confronted before and we have to support each other and think so,” Clinton said.

The former first woman Senator from New York state also underscored the importance of higher education to prepare young people for tomorrow and said, “Education at all levels is the key to the continuing effort for economic and social equality and justice…It is at the heart of how we continue to provide opportunity, and so it is important to open higher education to as many students as possible with a variety of educational institutions.”

Sharing her thoughts on the importance of self-reflection and introspection while being in leadership roles, Clinton said, “We are living in such a fast-paced world and being over-stimulated by information as well as misinformation. So, I think it’s especially important to shut off social media and your phone in order to have that time for self-reflection.”

Additionally, I think it’s important to try to understand what’s happening to children and teenagers right now because of social media, she stated adding, “They are in my view and based on research that’s being done that they are finding it difficult to understand how to live in the real world because the world on their screens of their phones is not real.”

“But when you’re 10, 12, 14, 16 years old, your brain has not even yet fully developed. It doesn’t finally happen till you’re 25 and you are being inundated with all these stimuli, the result, certainly from studies in the US, is an increase in anxiety and stress and depression and a lack of relationships. I am particularly worried about young people,” she added.

Advising students to mitigate the impact of social media, she added, “I feel like many of you who are here and getting this great world class education, trying to understand the impact of technology and social media, not to do away with it, but to try to mitigate it. There’s a very clear message that many of us have gotten over the years from the actual people who are the inventors of the technology, who are the creators of social media, who are the designers of the algorithms, primarily in Silicon Valley.”

She further said, “Do not let their own children have very much screen time. There are contracts that the executives of tech companies sign with caretakers, babysitters, nannies where they absolutely prohibit very much screen time. When I learned about that, and then subsequently it was validated. I thought that’s really so scary that the people who are inventing this new world know it well enough to want to protect their own children from it. So how do we protect all of our children? And how do we, as adults, separate ourselves from it enough to have that time for de-stressing self reflection? Thinking that is so important.”

Clinton also visited Palaj village and appreciated efforts of the Desai Foundation (one of the Commitment Makers being recognised by Clinton Global Initiative) and their initiatives along with their partnership with IITGN’s social outreach programmes, NEEV and NYASA, in impacting rural youth, women, and communities through skilling, entrepreneurship, and health programmes.

The Desai Foundation, an IIT Gandhinagar partner in their work to engage students and teachers in social work in the nearby areas, welcomed Clinton to Palaj village. Here she saw three of their flagship programmes — Heroes for Humanity, a programme born during the Covid pandemic that employs 500 local village residents and provides them with training to deliver local programming. This programme was a part of CGI’s Commitments to Action at the CGI 2022 Meeting.

The second is their flagship Asani Sanitary Napkin and Menstrual Equity Programme. And lastly, the Desai Foundation Health Camp, in collaboration with the IITGN-NYASA students, a programme that brings healthcare to rural communities.