NEW DELHI: India needs a strong, stable and decisive government for the next 10 years in order to achieve its political, economic and strategic objectives, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval asserted on Thursday.
The “collective will of the nation” has been aroused in the last four years under the current government and the results are palpable, he said.
“India will need a strong, stable and decisive government for the next 10 years, let there be no doubt about it, to achieve our national, political, economic and strategic objectives,” Doval said, delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture in Delhi.
“Weak coalitions will be bad for India,” Doval said, reiterating that democracy is the country’s strength. There was also a need to adhere to the “rule of law” with religious commitment, he emphasised.
India should not shy away from developing hard power to ensure its citizens have an armoured cover and which would also ensure an atmosphere for the nation’s progress even as it does not have extra territorial ambitions, he asserted.
Populist measures should not take precedence over national interest even though it may be a “temptation”. “You have to take difficult decisions in the larger interest of the nation,” Doval said. Weakened democracies often have the tendency to make democracies “soft power”, and unstable regimes and coalitions cannot protect collective will of the nation, he added.
Calling the government’s digitisation programme a “game changer”, the NSA said a nation needs to take advantage of emerging technology and not get tied down with the technology of yesteryears.
“Nations go a long way when they have great visions and visionaries who are capable of thinking beyond their own times. Sardar Patel was such a visionary.” However, despite opportunities where it could have taken its rightful place in the world, India squandered away due to various reasons, he said.