India does not believe in ‘cut-and-dried’ solutions for countries in need: Rajnath Singh

“This top-down approach towards solving problems has never been sustainable in the long run and it often leads to debt trap, reaction from the local population, conflict and so on,” he said in his address at the conclave, without naming any country.

The Defence Minister’s comments came at a time China is aiming to broaden the scope of its influence in the immediate neighborhood, in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and among the African countries.

China’s lending practices have been often drawn criticism from the West and it has been accused of burdening poor countries with enormous and unsustainable debt. China had denied the allegations.

In his inaugural address at the conclave, Rajnath said India has always stood for a rules-based global order in which the primordial instinct of “might being right” is replaced by fairness, respect and equality amongst all sovereign nations and has remained unattached to any alliance or faction of one group of nations against the other.

Over 160 delegates from several countries, including Defence and Deputy Defence Ministers from 27 countries, 15 Defence and Service Chiefs and 12 Permanent Secretaries from 80 countries participated in the conclave.

He highlighted the need for greater cooperation in the current complex global security scenario and called for real-time collaboration among nations to respond to the fast moving geopolitical and security realities.

He cited the example of the Covid-19 pandemic and said the global efforts to deal with it emphasised that shared global prosperity requires greater coordination among all nations in diverse areas, of which a key area is defence and security.

Rajnath also said terrorism, illegal arms trade, drugs smuggling, human trafficking, pose significant security threats to the world and sought new strategies to counter these threats. “India does not believe in dealing with such security issues in the old paternalistic or the neo-colonial paradigms. We consider all nations as equal partners,” he said.

“That is why we do not believe in imposing external or supra-national solutions to a country’s internal problems… Rather, we support the capacity building of our partner countries, so that they may chart out their own destiny, in accordance with their own genius,” he added.

India, he said, is moving ahead working with this principle by offering enhanced defence partnership to its friendly countries, which is accommodative of the national priorities and capacities. “We want to build with you, we want to launch with you, we want to create with you and we want to develop with you. We wish to create symbiotic relationships, where we can learn from each other, grow together, and create a win-win situation for all,” he said.

He reiterated that the government’s endeavour is to transcend hierarchical relationship of buyer and seller to a co-development and co-production model. The defence minister’s comments also underlined India’s efforts to make India a defence manufacturing hub with the help of partner nations, while adequately bringing out India’s defence export ambitions.