Ambassador Pranay Verma’s Remarks during ICWA-VASS 3rd Dialogue “Strengthening India-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”
(Hanoi, 26 May 2022)
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Vice President of Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Dr. Dang Xuan Thanh
Director General of Indian Council of World Affairs and my senior colleague from the Indian Foreign Service, Ambassador Vijay Thakur Singh
Distinguished scholars and participants from both sides
Ladies and gentlemen:
It gives me great pleasure to join this 3rd annual dialogue between ICWA and VASS.
The structure of today’s dialogue – divided in sessions focusing on partnerships for peace, prosperity and people – elegantly amplify the strategic guidance for the future of our relations that our leaders gave us through the “Joint Vision for Peace, prosperity and People” adopted by them at the Virtual Summit in December 2020.
In my view, today’s event has a special significance for at least three reasons.
First, after the disruption of the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, when we got habituated to doing conferences and webinars online, it is refreshing to hold this dialogue in a face-to-face format. It is so delightful to see resumption of flight connectivity between our countries and have visitors once again travelling in both directions.
Second, we are holding this dialogue at a time when India and Vietnam are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their diplomatic relations. There is an added significance for India this year as we are also celebrating the 75th anniversary of our independence, what we call the “Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav”. While celebrating these milestones built on our past, this dialogue gives us an excellent opportunity to look at the future of our relations.
And the third point of significance is that this dialogue is taking place against the backdrop of some far-reaching changes taking place in our region and the world.
While we are still managing the fallouts of the pandemic, the crisis in Ukraine and challenges in our own shared Indo-Pacific region have created new geo-political and geo-economic uncertainties.
Today’s dialogue provides an opportunity for consultations that our two countries – as Comprehensive Strategic Partners – must undertake to assess the implications of these changes.
And I believe that there can be no better platform to explore such a wide canvas of issues than this dialogue between premier repositories of knowledge on international affairs in our two countries – VASS and ICWA.
While we celebrate the 50 years of our Diplomatic relations, we also acknowledge that our friendship and close relations go much beyond these fifty years.
As societies bonded together by shared cultural and civilizational heritage, our is a millennia old relationship. This we realize increasingly well as we rediscover our ancient Buddhist connections and excavate Indian icons and cultural imprints at various archaeological sites in Vietnam.
Nonetheless, the last fifty years themselves have been a remarkable journey of togetherness as both India and Vietnam have overcome adversities to pursue nation-building and socio-economic transformation.
Today, India-Vietnam relations are characterized as “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”.
These two adjectives – “comprehensive” and “strategic” – truthfully reflect the wide-ranging collaborations currently taking placing between our two countries. But equally important, they underline the deep political and strategic mutual trust and understanding that we enjoy in our relationship and which provide a robust foundation for our cooperation to move forward in the future.
As we explore the future of our partnership, it is striking to find many similarities that we share.
And I am fond of talking about those similarities because they are truly the reasons why we should be more confident, and also more ambitious, about the future of our ties.
First, we have a strong developmental instinct as two aspirational societies endowed with a young demography that is yearning for progress and prosperity.
Both our countries are focused on joining the ranks of high-income advanced economies by the time we complete the centenary of our respective independence – 2045 for Vietnam and 2047 for India.
Second, our developmental visions themselves are quite similar. We are two rapidly growing economies. We both are committed to overcoming shared challenges like climate change and poverty to achieve sustainable development and above all, an inclusive growth.
Third, both India and Vietnam aspire for self-reliance to become self-sustaining and resilient. COVID-19 pandemic has only further reinforced this instinct.
India’s vision of “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” or “Self-Reliant India”, and Vietnam’s vision of “independent, self-reliant economy” are quite similar. Both emphasize self-reliance, but are not about self-isolation. Rather, they are about building capacities at home so that we can engage with global economy more capably, more confidently.
Fourth, our nationalism, unlike much of the rest of the world, is not inward looking. In fact, it is very internationalist in outlook. We are ready for greater engagement and integration with world, and willing to shoulder regional and international responsibilities for collective good and mutual development.
Fifth, we are two countries increasingly driven by the promise of new technologies, innovation, and digitization to deliver economic growth and people’s empowerment. The Digital India Mission and Vietnam’s Digital Society campaign are fine examples of this.
And last but not the least, we have similar views on most regional and international issues, which automatically create grounds for closer cooperation between us on regional and international stage. We both are fully committed to international law and rules-based order. We both are ardent proponents of reformed multilateralism. And we both strongly believe that India-Vietnam cooperation provides a factor of stability in our shared Indo-Pacific region.
So that’s in brief my perspective of this great relationship and its future. I do hope that some of these thoughts might encourage deliberations on the broader orientation for the future of our partnership during your interaction.
I do not wish to present a commentary on the status of our relationship, which you all, as scholars of India-Vietnam relations, follow closely and know too well.
Before I conclude, let me affirm that past dialogues between ICWA and VASS have been extremely valuable for our policy-making and for broadening the horizon of possibilities our partnership can achieve. I am confident that this edition of the dialogue will do so even more eminently.
I wish you all a great discussion ahead! Thank you for giving me this opportunity!
