EAM Jaishankar highlights India’s growing global partnerships and regional leadership, focusing on sustainable development, crisis response, and cooperative diplomacy.
India’s global outreach has grown significantly over the past decade, a trend that External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr. S. Jaishankar highlighted during his address at the convocation ceremony of Parul University in Vadodara, Gujarat. Speaking to students and dignitaries, Jaishankar emphasized that India’s partnership footprint is “large and growing,” spanning continents and covering a wide range of sectors, from education to infrastructure and disaster relief.
“Be it engineers in Zanzibar or ‘solar mamas’ in the Pacific, from vocational training to Information Technology, from improving tax systems to ensuring security, India’s partnership footprint is large and growing,” Jaishankar said. He pointed out how this outreach includes distance education, virtual health training, and development partnerships designed to build long-term capabilities.
Highlighting India’s guiding philosophy, Jaishankar invoked the famous adage: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” India, he said, is committed to the latter approach—developing sustainable capacities in partner countries using its own experience and expertise.
The minister stressed that nowhere is this commitment more visible than in India’s immediate neighbourhood. Over the last ten years, South Asia has witnessed a remarkable transformation in connectivity and cooperation. “There are power grids, fuel pipelines, roads, railways and waterways that could not have even been imagined a decade earlier,” he noted.
India has played a key role during crises in the region and beyond. From supplying COVID-19 vaccines to neighbouring countries, to providing fuel and fertilizers during the Ukraine war, to responding promptly to natural disasters in Nepal and Myanmar, India has consistently positioned itself as a first responder. The same commitment was evident during economic and political turmoil in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the Maldives.
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EAM Jaishankar also addressed the need for mutual respect and shared benefits among nations, especially in times of global uncertainty. He warned that the world today is increasingly turbulent and that cooperation based on proximity and trust is more critical than ever.
“In such contingencies, the cooperative facet of world affairs comes to the fore. Relying on those more distant and less connected is no longer prudent,” Jaishankar remarked. He added that India’s growing responsibility on the global stage is a reflection of both its capabilities and its values.
India’s evolving diplomatic and developmental engagement demonstrates a new era of international cooperation—one based on mutual benefit, regional solidarity, and sustainable growth.
