It is not that I am against these. But I must tell you that there is one danger in this thing. They have tried to internationalize bilateral issue. This is the game behind these small neighbours; they have this psychology that India is big country, a big nation. Now we cannot help it. Can we? In order to please some of the neighboring countries can we become another small country? We cannot do it. (Interruptions) We are a big country. We are a fertile country both intellectually and in terms of manpower, in terms of population, as well. This is all right. But there has always been an effort by some of these neighbours I don’t want to mention nations who have always wanted to internationalize some issues. Whenever they found that they could not succeed in internationalizing them, they wanted to regionalize them. This is another way of doing the same thing! So, be careful about these things. Go and give them help. If you want to have the next conference in Delhi, you have it by all means. But about this one thing you have to be careful because some of these countries play this games against India. The long-term interests of India sometimes are in danger as far as these issues are concerned. Therefore, I would like you to be careful about these things.
The other issue that we will have to think more particularly is the North-South dialogue. This is a very important issue. If you do not find any answer to problem of poverty I do not think the internal policies that we are declaring also are likely to succeed. We are talking that we are fighting against this problems of poverty in India; we are committed as a nation for this; but how can we do it, unless, those who had the advantage of having empires in the world, and who had the advantage of having a technological revolution 200 years ahead of us, try to share and transfer the resources to us?
Now, we read news about the World Bank’s troubles. The Retiring President of the World Bank was in India just a couple of days ago and he has very liberally said something about aid. I am not inclined to believe completely in that. It is a polite way of saying it. There is a polite way of listening to it! I have one fear and somebody mentioned that in his speech, I think it was Prof. Tewary who mentioned it, that now the American policy is to try to bilateralise financial cooperation and not do these things through multilateral organisations like the IMF and World Bank. These are the new trends there. Therefore we will have to remain very alert. Naturally we have got our own limitations. We are one of those who want to ‘receive’. We are not in a position to ‘give’. Therefore, naturally, people are likely to misunderstand. But at the same time we must create a favourable atmosphere in the countries particularly some western countries, who seem to be in some sort of a reasonable mood now days. But please move them from their political position to the economic field. I have found this because I have attended some conferences wherein these talks had their early beginning about the New Economic Order and I found that two countries were rather difficult for us to manage. One was West Germany and the other was U. S. A. Regarding West Germany, I find, there can be some hope because Mr. Brandt himself, as Chairman of a Commission, has produced a useful report. Even if it is accepted as a minimum, it will mean some progress for the future. But I am very much doubtful whether the present US administration will be willing to accept any part of it.
