To save the Earth’s environment, UN declared Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are to be achieved by the year 2030. However it seems that this may not be achievable even by 2050. In order to resolve these global issues, India has taken a huge initiative.
The 17 SDGs are part of a transformative agenda of the Indian Government. Since all round Development must include everyone and done through everyone’s participation, including the most vulnerable and marginalised. Mere economic growth is not sufficient but must include fairer and equal distribution for the entire society.
India having the largest population in the World is most critical in determining the success of these SDGs. As early as 2015, PM Modi had said at the UN Sustainable Development Summit 2015, that “Sustainable development of one-sixth of humanity will be of great consequence to the world and our beautiful planet. It will be a world of fewer challenges and greater hope; and, more confident of its success”.
Since 1915, India through its economic success has already successfully ensured that more than 271 million Indians are now out of poverty level and empowered. They have access to enhanced nutrition, child health, education, sanitation, drinking water, electricity and housing. This has helped in reducing inequalities especially among people in vulnerable section of the Indian Society.
100% rural sanitation has been achieved and there has been sharp reduction in child and maternal mortality rates. Universal health coverage has been institutionalized through the world’s largest health protection scheme which provides an annual cover of over INR 5 lacs each to 100 million families, covering nearly 500 million individuals.
India supports developing countries through its INR 1500 Crore India-UN Development Partnership Fund. The country was at the forefront to address the global COVID-19 pandemic. India extended medical assistance to several countries and operationalized the SAARC COVID-19 Emergency Fund. India has already become the third largest economy in Purchasing Power Parity terms (actual indicator of economy). Even in USD terms it is now the fifth largest behind USA, China, Japan and Germany.
Now the need is there for India to nudge the current geopolitical situations in the direction of easing tensions. The entire world needs to realize that terrorism is the worst thing happening in this world and that it cannot be differentiated by categorizing it into Good and bad terrorism, as few countries seem to be doing. From this point of view, the most important international conflict which was underway from 1947 has been stemmed to a great extent i.e. support and export of terrorism by Pakistan. Now incase Pakistan itself is unable to eradicate it fully then India will have to do it by wiping out terror basesand groups from inside Pakistan itself.
Major and mini civil war keeps breaking out on the African Continent. The Ethiopian conflict in fact in 2022 had 20 % more deaths than the European conflict in Ukraine. However global media dominated by Western Media has tried its level best to showcase the Ukraine Conflict as the Worst Global disaster. Well this conflict at its best only challenges the existing but fast decaying global Power Dominance Order.
The political systems of many African countries are reeling due to poor growth in economy, coups d’état and the growing power of religious extremists. India needs to steer the African nation towards economic and social progress and also environmental protection. This has already been commenced by India through the G20 Presidentship.
Europe has an unnecessary conflict going on between Ukraine and Russia which needs to be stopped at once. The poor countries of the world are unnecessarily paying the price of this conflict. Now time has come for India to sternly point out to all parties involved that political negotiations must be done to resolve the conflict without further delay.
While there is no end in sight to the Ukraine conflict, yet another conflict has broken out between Israel and extremist forces involving the Islamic group Hamas in Gaza in October. The rift between North Korea on one side and South Korea and Japan on the other is progressing further. China’s declared intention of capturing Taiwan is well known. And so is China’s determination of not vacating captured Indian Territory in Ladhak and not withdrawing from Occupation of Tibet.
New crises are occurring one after another, and the future of the world seems to be becoming more and more chaotic. With all this confusion, UN is heading the way of the League of Nations. We cannot exclude 1/6 of Humanity from having its permanent representative in the UN Security Council and expect it to function effectively. India has to become a permanent member without ifs and buts. Thereafter with Indian initiative the UN needs to identify critical positive structural factors and develop them in order to prevent growth of negative changes from taking place.
In internal civil wars and long-running conflicts like in Europe, like in Middle East and like in Gaza, it is extremely difficult to fix the responsibility who is responsible. India needs to help build a new international order as a whole to ensure immediate peace negotiations between the conflicting parties. This needs to be started by India for Asia and the Indian Ocean Region on priority.
Today China has become a global economic power and a major military force. Only India has the future potential to outmatch China economically. Militarily too India has put a full stop to the PLA tactics of advancement through salami slicing with the Galwan incident where PLA lost around 40 as killed and another 40 as wounded . Within the Indian Ocean, the very cleverly propagated Chinese dominance through the theory of String of Pearls lies fully broken.
In fact now India has already decided to even help out USA and Japan in their quest of keeping the Indo Pacific shipping routes free from any interference. India has also extended friendly hands towards Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia and even Taiwan and this is going to see a lot of progress in coming years.
So far, both India and China have wisely avoided making the war in the Himalayas or in the Indian Ocean Region. Conflict has to be avoided also in the Natuna Sea / Philippines Sea and South China Sea and even the Taiwan Strait.
Instead of conflict, India must turn the World’s attention to Climate Change, Humanitarian Relief during Natural Disasters and lifting up of the world’s nearly 700 million poor people above the poverty line.
(Author is a retired army officer. He has led the first deployment of Special Forces in Kashmir Valley in 1992 and has spent 15 years of his service life in J& K. Being a DSSC graduate, he has held a number of Staff appointments at Army HQ , a Mountain Division HQ , a CI Force HQ , Special Forces HQ and three instructional tenure. Feedback: [email protected])
