India has to give due weightage to technology for its geopolitical positioning as it will play a crucial role in striking alliances in a multi-polar world, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said here on Tuesday while stressing the point that the country cannot remain “agnostic” to developments in this sector.
Making this assertion at the Global Technology Summit, he said India would like to use its G-20 Presidency to reflect the interests and concerns of the global south that have been sidelined over the years. India will assume presidency on December one.
Elaborating upon the role of technology, Jaishankar said the rise of India was deeply linked with the rise of Indian technology. “We cannot be agnostic about technology. We have to stop thinking that there is something neutral about technology…more and more things are technology driven and we need to understand that there is a very strong political connotation in-built into technology,” the minister said. He said the principle of economic strategic autonomy will hold the key to global rebalancing and big players will constantly strive to be more capable technologically.
“We, especially in India in the last two years, have woken up to the fact, where does our data reside? Who processes and harvests our data and what do they do with it? That is a very very key question,” Jaishnakar said.
He said it was important to look at the quality of partners and the sociology partners that India has in the arena of technological and strategic spheres.
Recounting his interaction with his counterparts in Africa and Latin America, Jaishankar said there has been a lot of interest in the digitally-enabled delivery platforms developed by India in the global south.
He said the government distributed free food grains to 80 crore poor and direct benefit transfer to 45 crore beneficiaries.The three-day Global Technology Summit is co-hosted by the Ministry of External Affairs and Carnegie India. The theme for the seventh edition of the Summit this year is ‘Geopolitics of Technology'.
