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Gordon Brown backs India's
Bid for UNSC and G-8
"A generation ago, a British prime minister had to
worry about the global arms race. Today a British prime minister has to
worry about the global skills race - because the nation that shows it
can bring out the best in its people will be the great success story of
the coming decades."
India
should not be seen as part "of a low-pay world but a high-skills
world", British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said, in the most
emphatic advocacy yet by any western leader of an India poised to
dominate the 21st century on the strength of more than body-shopping,
BPO work and bottom-rung salaries. |
Paying homage to India's growing, if still-unrealised importance in
international policy architecture, Brown called for a "global New
Deal" with India to be included in all other important bodies
including permanent seat in United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and G-8
or group of industrialised countries and
the International Monetary Fund.
He said, "A Security Council without India cannot be a Security
Council reflecting the reality of the day (and) a G8 that discusses the
world economy without involving India cannot be a G-8 that is discussing
all the details of what needs to be done in the world economy."
Brown added that the Western world needed to remember the 1940s
orthodoxy that "for prosperity to be retained, it had to be
shared".
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's glowing endorsement of India was delivered
on April 22 at an annual luncheon organised
by his governing Labour Party's parliamentary Friends of India grouping at
Downing Street in London discussing on the issue of ‘global food price
rising’. Other senior members of Brown's cabinet, including former foreign secretary
and current justice secretary Jack Straw, Olympics minister Tessa Jowell, London mayor Ken Livingstone,
former Labour leader and current British Council chairman Neil Kinnock and
hundreds of top-flight
British Indian businessmen, including Lord Swaraj Paul, bankers, techies,
were also present.
It is not he first time Gordon has vigorously advocated
India’s role in globe in terms of social, technological and economical
aspects. Earlier, on his first visit to India Brown has strongly support
to India by stating, “I support India's bid for a permanent place at the
United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and to work with others on an
expanded UN council.”
Speaking on the old relationship of Britain to India,
Brown said that Britain has been a traditional Indian ally and in terms of
economic prospective, UK is the fifth largest foreign direct investor in
India, while India is Britain’s second largest Asian investor and eighth
largest investor.
“The trade between the two countries has grown by
over 20 percent in just one year,” said Brown.
On the issue of global recession and food crisis, Grown
said, “We need a new early warning system for the global economy so we
can prevent the kind of credit crunch that we have had in the last few
months. For this we need an international institution that demands the
support of the Asian continent as well as Europe and America that can
actually show it can be involved in crisis prevention as well as crisis
resolution.”
In a powerful message, which commentators said was sure to be noted in
chancelleries throughout Europe, Brown, worrying over the hiking skills race,
said his government proposed an
ambitious plan to treble Indian apprenticeships in the UK over the next
decade because "A generation ago, a British prime minister had to
worry about the global arms race. Today a British prime minister has to
worry about the global skills race - because the nation that shows it
can bring out the best in its people will be the great success story of
the coming decades."
On the issue of strengthening the relationship with
India, Gordon said, “India and Britain were working together and this
partnership is stronger than ever. It will strengthen in the years to
come. It will not simply be a partnership for India and Britain. It will
be partnership that will benefit the whole world.”
To heighten India’s present in the globe he cited
that Britain is looking forward to working with the Indian government and
the Indian people in a major programme of the reform of the international
institutions that will recognise the rising importance of India in the
world.
The British prime minister's unashamed advocacy of the India success
story was laced with occasional flashes of humour as he recalled his
visit to India in January 2007 being "dominated by what was
happening on Big Brother and to Shilpa Shetty", but the bilateral
relationship, he said, had now settled into an easier, more dynamic
rhythm.
Offering an extraordinary insight into his feelings for India, Brown
said he first became "aware of India from my uncle, who was a
professor of electrical engineering at IIT in the 1960s". He said,
"I fell in love with India" and reiterated his oft-expressed
admiration for Mahatma Gandhi and the world-changing forces he was able
to unleash simply by "changing people's minds".
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