‘West is not the bad guy,’ says S Jaishankar; points to world's complexity

S Jaishankar, the External Affairs Minister of India, has said that the West was not the "bad guy" as they were not the ones who overloaded Asian and African markets with goods on a massive scale. The Minister also pointed out that there was a need to get over this thought of perceiving them with negativity.

In an interview with Malayalam news channel Asianet, Jaishankar also clarified that he was not batting for the West. This interview was done by the former Indian diplomat T P Sreenivasan.

Jaishankar was in Thiruvananthapuram to participate in the launch of the PM Vishwakarma scheme.

“It is not the West which is flooding Asia and Africa with goods on a massive scale. I think we need to get over the syndrome of the past that the West is the bad guy, and on the other side are the developing countries. The world is more complicated, the problems are much more complicated than that," he said.

When asked about the reason behind Chinese President Xi Jinping not attending the G20 summit in New Delhi and whether it could be that he did not want India to be perceived as the leader of the Global South, Jaishankar said that the reasons were up for speculation.

“A very strong sense, which started building about a decade ago, and it started building with the iniquities of globalisation when countries saw that their products, manufacturing, and employment came under stress, their markets were flooded by goods which came from elsewhere. For many of them, it seemed like their only utility in life was to be resource providers for other economies,” he said.

“These countries and their distress grew over the last 15 to 20 years as globalisation unfolded. So, there is an underlying resentment and pain built up over 20 years about the unfairness of the global economy. On top of it came COVID, and then came the next one, which was the Ukraine conflict, where energy prices went up, and food prices went up. So, there was anger building in the world over the last 20 years, that some parts of the world are focused on themselves and are actually using us as an extractive resource,” he added.

He also clarified that he was not taking the side of the West and said that there was a concentration on manufacturing in today's globalisation. And it was being leveraged and subsidised, affecting various nations' economies.

He also mentioned India's manufacturing, agriculture, scientific achievements like the Chandrayaan-3 mission, and ability to vaccinate have created a sense among the Global South, which includes the African Union, "that one of us has the ability to stand, grow and progress,” he said.

"So, they identify with us in a way that they do not with other people," Jaishankar added.

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