India should make renewed efforts for UNSC membership: Vice President Naidu

He also stressed the need to build consensus for expansion and democratisation of a number of multilateral fora to ensure representation to a number of other emerging nations.

His comments came while interacting with Officer Trainees of the 2018 batch of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Bhutanese diplomats here when he referred to India's growing prominence on the world stage and underscored the need for enhancing support from world nations and building a sustained dialogue in favour of UNSC reforms.

Congratulating the young officers for choosing IFS as a profession, Mr Naidu said the Service offered a challenging and exciting career and a unique opportunity to take India’s great civilisational and cultural ethos with its developmental aspirations to the rest of the world.

As ‘future spokespersons, interpreters, and narrators of India’s story to the world’, the young diplomats would soon work on constructing new bridges of understanding between India and the rest of the world, he told them.

"You can play an important role in shaping the geopolitics of the future and in determining the new world order," he pointed out.

Mr Naidu cautioned that the return of the unwelcome tendency of protectionism would adversely impact the global effort for collective advancement. Despite the acknowledged need for an Integrated World Order, new walls were coming up to impede the free flow of goods and services and people as well.

Outlining the challenges facing the budding diplomats, he expressed concern over the threat posed by terrorism to which no country was immune and called for a united response from world nations to curb the menace of terrorism.

Pointing out that India consistently took an unrelenting and uncompromising stand against terrorism, he said: “We must continue to be champions of peace.”

On unethical acts of financial fugitives, the Vice President expressed concern over the ease with which they find safe havens in other countries. He suggested the constant updating and overhauling of Extradition Treaties and all bilateral and multilateral agreements to defend and safeguard the integrated global economic order for the collective good.

The Vice President said that the world community would need India’s participation to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, because of the problems faced by the planet today needed a humane and holistic vision. The world needs India because it needs a voice that speaks of peace, non-violence and peaceful co-existence citing the International Solar Alliance launched under India’s initiative in Paris as an example.

On India moving on the development path swiftly, he said the world was looking at India with keen interest. He emphasised the need to take advantage of this momentum by capitalising on opportunities in areas of trade, services, investments, and infrastructure. “Diplomats must be proactive in enabling Indian industries and business to tap into world markets and must do their best in encouraging foreign investment to flow into India”, he stressed.

Describing the Indian diaspora as an asset, he said they play an important role culturally as well as economically in the countries they live in.

He urged the young officers to develop a deep understanding of the countries of their posting and explore all opportunities for improving relations between those countries and India and uphold the principles of integrity, probity, and conscientiousness at all times.

Referring to the just-concluded General Elections 2019, the Vice President said people had made their choice with resounding clarity and had voted for stability.

Image credit: UNI