I see a sense of energy, optimism and hope in India: William Cohen
“In the last few days that I have been here, one sees a sense of energy, optimism and hope that I did not see a year ago. Just about a year back when I was here, I felt a sense of malaise in India,” said Mr William Cohen, Chairman and CEO, the Cohen Group, delivering the keynote address at the India-US Technology Summit, organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and the United States as the Partner Country, at Greater Noida today.
Mr Cohen, former US Senator and former Defence Secretary, has had the honour of being elected six times in a row to the US Congress, and was chosen as Defence Secretary by the then US President Bill Clinton, making him the first-ever opposition leader to be made a minister.
Elaborating on the changes, Mr Cohen said: “Prime Minister Modi has tapped into this desperate need of hope. He has tapped into the hearts of people. At Madison he said that ‘India is open for business’. I feel that the Indians in America wanted to hear something like that.”
Praising the infectious optimism that he witnesses now in India, Mr Cohen also had words of advice for Indians. He said that if the country wants to achieve what the Indian Prime Minister has been talking about, India will have to remove road blocks like ambiguity in laws. “Hope is so fundamental… you have to work towards the ideas that Prime Minister Modi has talked about,” adding that India is witnessing such a demand for progress, for hope because, “you have a leader who wants that.”
He drew parallels and paradoxes between the two countries. He said: “We are natural partners. We share the same ideas and threats. We want to see food security, energy security and cyber security… we want a clean environment and reduce carbon emissions. We had 9/11 and you had 26/11.”
Highlighting the paradoxes, he said: “We have so much in common then why can’t we do more together?” Answering his own question, he said: “Because we have a strategic distrust. India has a strategic distrust of us. It feels that the Congress may do this, it may do that… we have a distrust of India… we say that India has relations with Russia and Iran.”
Moving on to global affairs, Mr Cohen said that we have to learn how to reconcile differences because differences will always be there. But the US cannot ignore what is happening around the world—Ukraine, Syria and the situation in the Middle East. Responding to questions, he said that there are lessons to be learnt from Iraq for Afghanistan so that an American pull-out from Afghanistan does not result in a comeback of terror groups as has happened in Iraq.
On North Korea, Mr Cohen said that the US hopes that China, which is the only possible ally of the communist country, will, in the long run, bring about some sense in North Korea. He said that China is needed to avoid potentially dangerous situations that may arise in that region.
About Iran, he said that he is convinced that the Obama administration will try to arrive at some kind of a deal with Iran on the nuclear issue. “We want a cap on their nuclear enrichment while Iranians want a break from sanctions.”
The two-day India-US Technology Summit saw wide participation from US companies and also the US government has identified manufacturing, IT, clean & renewable energy, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology & healthcare, sustainable cities, natural resources & earth sciences as the focus areas for discussions and collaboration between the two countries.
Greater Noida
November 19, 2014