S. Jaishankar

You know, make it easier for them.

And I'm very glad that Mr. Doval has gone, Jaishankar has come, and now this is happening.

So this is the big opportunity.

I think you can conserve your geopolitical space between Kabul and Yangon much better by working with them rather than get them, you know, doing the Singapore's et cetera, et cetera.

Now, India's official stance is in conflict with both countries.

As per External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, India has no interest in weakening the US dollar at all, but only wants to de-risk from it.

But we also want a payment settlement system that doesn't give China the reins.

Moreover, a united BRICS currency would also involve giving up national autonomy over monetary policy, fiscal policies, and exchange rates.

Meanwhile, you have two point four million Indian citizens currently living and working in Saudi Arabia with cities there on high alert from Houthi strikes.

The situation is so tense that External Affairs Minister Jaishankar actually held emergency discussions with the Saudi foreign minister during the BRICS Summit.

It really forces a hard look at India's strategic posture because historically, New Delhi loves to maintain diplomatic neutrality.

But with millions of its diaspora in the direct line of fire and its commercial shipping taking literal missile hits, how long can India practically maintain neutrality between Iran and the US-Saudi bloc?

And so this new multilateralism, if you're India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, you have power today, real power, and you want to be respected in that.

Last point that I'll make on this is that S. Jaishankar, the very, you know, outspoken external affairs minister of India, he famously said, "Listen, we tried to get into the G7 and they wouldn't let us, so we made the BRICS." So this sense of exclusion that many people in these countries feel from the existing institutions is something that has fed into what the Chinese are doing, and the Chinese are leveraging that, leaning into it, some say exploiting it, but it's good politics.

Totally.

Well, and you know, the cynic would say, "Well, this just serves China's interest," but that's just smart politics.

BRICS is certainly, uh, growing and India is helping drive the process because it refuses to become anyone's subordinate.

I've been talking about Jai Shankar and Narendra Modi, Jesus, for two years, right? Russia's benefiting from India's independence.

China is accommodating it.

And the United States, we have to understand it.

The global economy has not found its way around the Iran war.

I think we should have followed more closely Jai Shankar's visit to both Moscow and to Kiev.

That wasn't a coincidence.

But from conversations with a lot of people around those meetings, it appears, A, that both Ukraine and Russia believe that they are winning the war.

What will this BRICS currency represent then, if not the yuan? If you wish for the end of the dollar, are you willing to live in the yuan era? Dollar will not be replaced by INR, Indian rupee, or the ruble.

It is just as well that S. Jaishankar repeatedly keeps countering this fantasy.

I'm sorry to be a party pooper.

Multilateral summits do serve a purpose, most of all for providing a forum for leaders to talk bilaterally despite their differences.

Multipolar, but not in the Chinese way.

Jaishankar, who's the foreign minister of India- Once said that China is a revisionist power, India is a reformist power, that India's not really happy with the global status quo.

In the United Nations system, India, with one point four billion people and nuclear weapons, has exactly as many votes in the General Assembly as Liechtenstein or Luxembourg.

One vote.

There is a sense that the Ukrainian leader, Vladimir Zelensky, has appealed for a ceasefire and the US special interlocutors will be visiting Kyiv very soon and also then Moscow.

There is also an indication because India it seems, is also through back channels mediating this because India's foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, was also in Kyiv.

Earlier, he was in Moscow as well.

So, clearly, the diplomatic initiatives have intensified.

So the best way to go forward with China would be to try and create our own pathway for a development, which is mutually beneficial.

And I think the external affairs minister, Dr. Jaishankar, has been saying Relations with China should take place on the basis of three mutuals, he calls it.

Mutual interest, mutual respect and mutual sensitivity.

This is the only way forward with China.