BENGALURU: The country requires policies that would help in absorbing technologies for its rapid development, said Foreign Secretary, S Jaishankar, here on Tuesday. India, he said, could take a cue from China which has benefited from such policies.
Speaking at the Carnegie India Global Technology Summit, he said China has “Very rapidly assimilated nuclear reactors and high speed trains through policies that are designed to encourage sharing technology. To do that, we must develop the infrastructure and experience to absorb such technologies.”
To a question on whether the unilateral nullification clause in the Indo-Japan nuclear agreement was a concern, he said that it came down to how one can manage the possibility that somebody could nullify an agreement of co-operation.
Cost-effective innovations
He said India’s ability to come to the market with new products at a fraction of the cost has been a benefit. He quoted generic medicine as an example for the same. Such innovations in India have also created some international pressure, which was ensured by making some amends to Intellectual Property Rights regulations. Earlier, in his address, he said the focus of diplomacy has changed in the past few years, citing agreements for international solar project and high speed rail projects as examples. He said that all the announcements made in the last two years, such as Make In India, Digital India and others, “outline a larger thinking to rapidly modernise India.”
‘Other nations keen to emulate Aadhaar project’
Countries such as Morocco and Russia have shown interest in emulating the Aadhaar project to provide welfare schemes and other programmes, said R S Sharma, chairman, Telephone Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), here on Tuesday. The Aadhaar project, which aims to provide unique identification numbers to 1.3 billion citizens, has helped in creating technology leadership and could be an effective tool for diplomacy, he said. He said that a framework can be created to protect privacy in the digital world.