By IANS,
New Delhi : Arguing that India has “no place in the world order” currently, former national security advisor (NSA) Brajesh Mishra Tuesday said the country has to step up economic reforms and strengthen military capabilities if it wants to overcome the situation.
“I am a blunt man… Sorry to say we have no place in the world order” now, Mishra said while delivering the inaugural K. Subrahmanyam memorial annual lecture here.
West Bengal Governor and another former NSA, M.K. Narayanan, presided over the function, organised by the Global India Foundation (GIF), in memory of Subrahmanyam, India’s eminent strategic expert, who died Feb 2 this year.
The global situation and the policies of the United States has pushed India to a limited role. engaged and embroiled with two enemies – Pakistan and China, Mishra said.
He said that the situation can be altered if the country break out of the present style of governance.
“Economic reforms appear to have stopped mid-way,” Mishra said.
Important defence purchase deals are delayed to ensure personal integrity, he added.
“If the current defence purchase pace continues , many equipments will be obsolete when they arrive after ten years or so,” he contended, adding the purchase procedures followed at present were of the 19th century.
The former NSA said that China has objected to adding India to the Asian Group of 3 – China, Japan and South Korea. He said China and Pakistan were militaristic allies.
He said though the US was not keen on better relations with India post-disintegration of the Soviet Union, it changed the policy gradually.
Now, India should look beyond the ties with the US and strengthen its relations with the European Union, ASEAN countries and the Asian powers, Mishra said.
In his remarks, Narayanan said Subrahmanyam was the among the first to observe in 2004 that the US was keen on wider ties with India. This culminated in the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Treaty , he added.
Vice Admiral (retd.) P.J. Jacob, who is the chairman of the GIF, and Arundhati Ghose, India’s former permanent representative to the UN Conference on Disarmament also spoke at the function, attended by union Minister Saugata Ray, diplomats and academics.