Our economy is growing as witnessed in our growing consumption of energy. A confident India under a confident leadership of PM Modi, is earnestly trying to find solutions that work best for the country. Trade and Terror cannot go together, neither can trade and blood!
Navin Berry
Somewhere around that time, when the massacre happened in Pahalgam and the entire country was shaken up, in your understanding, was this feeling of betrayal and tragedy shared globally, or were we feeling alone and left out in that hour of misery?
Hardeep Puri
What happened in Pahalgam was by any yardstick a horrific act of terror. Every act of terror needs to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. This one equally, 26 innocent lives were lost because someone wanted to indulge in this depravity, in this act of terror and young lives, some of them recently married and other very young people were snuffed out. Why is terrorism so bad? Because the terrorist takes away the most fundamental of human rights, the right to life. Were we the only ones affected by Pahalgam? Well, you know, the honest God’s truth is that for a long time, people thought terrorism was something that strikes the other guys. Up to 9/11, they thought terrorism was someone else’s problem.
If you were looking, say in the west, if you were looking in the northern hemisphere, somebody looking down and you had a discussion on terror, they thought it was somebody else’s problem. And that terror affects ‘the other people’. I remember being accredited to the court of St. James in London. I was deputy high commissioner between March 1999 and I think 2002 and I kept telling my British friends that I appreciate that your traditional position on human rights is one that I don’t understand. They said that because the state as against the individual, state is an all-powerful entity and the individual is weak and vulnerable, human rights violations are committed by the state. So, I said, this was the pre-Al Qaeda position. Al Qaeda had the ability, the infrastructure which states could command. And the individual was no longer vulnerable. The individual went into Al-Shabaab, went into you know Al-Qaeda and the states were constantly being undermined. So, I said just be careful. There will come a time when the democratic freedom which you are so wedded to, will be used against you.
This was a discussion I had sometime in the year 2000 or so. Today I’d be very happy to meet my interlocutors and ask them what they believe. Because one thing is to give democratic freedom and the other guy turns out to be a terrorist. I also don’t believe that this traditional discussion one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter is nonsense. One is ideological support but if anyone kills people in innocent people in cold blood, I think that needs to be condemned and I think if any state system uses terror as an instrument of state policy and exports terror that state system needs to be dealt with, and I think that’s the difference between Modi’s India of today and the treatment earlier. Earlier, we used to get very upset. Then we said, oh, we have choices. We will exercise restraint.
That’s a lot of nonsense. I mean, even when the parliament was attacked, what did we do? We mobilized, but we didn’t do anything. 26/11, what did we do? We got attacked. We didn’t do anything. After Balakot we sent a strike, but that was limited. This time in 22 minutes you had 9 of their terror and security establishments wedded to the terror network obliterated.
Navin Berry
Tell me in this war against terror or this retaliation, did we at any time feel singled out or we felt left alone?
Hardeep Puri
You must understand that people will all condemn terrorism. They will always be condemned. But if you are looking like something more, then you have to explain to people what has happened. And I think now there is a much better understanding. Because something goes wrong somewhere, now what is an act of terror? What is not? But as I said, they all thought terror was somebody else’s problem. Now terror has stuck home after 9/11. And they saw what happened. I mean considering what they did, we are still being very restrained. But now the message has gone. One, talks and terror don’t mix – if you believe in terror, no talks, if you believe in terror, no trade and blood and water don’t mix and that any act of terror will be an act of war. I think that is the profundity that is the absolute clarity of the message.
Navin Berry
There is also the kind of expectation from an average Indian. If next time they do something, then we won’t leave them, that we must go one step further.
Hardeep Puri
I’m speaking to you now like an Indian. Leave the decision-making on what should be done militarily or in the related field to those who have the responsibility for that. And who have the knowledge of the overall picture. So, I would be reluctant to say, next time we will do more. No. The profundity of the message that an act of terror will be treated as an act of war – that is the political message, what will be done when you’re dealing with a failed state. These are two countries born from the womb of the same mother – one has become the fourth largest economy in the world, soon to be the third largest economy, and the other is a pretty failed state, living on handouts.
Navin Berry
So, that is another fundamental question. How do we deal with a failed state, one that ironically, we would like to be friends with? How did the war of narratives eventually turn out?
Hardeep Puri
First of all, never go into a situation that I am “invincible sort of a situation”. In a war, there is always some collateral damage. Satellite imagery available in the public domain, commercially available, showed that you didn’t even have to do anything. Were they able to show any damage on your side?
I mean I can tell you, you and I were around in the university, after the 1971 war, when people used to mock the Pakistanis to say, you lost half of your country, you lost the eastern half. They said, no, no, but we won the war in the West. I mean, if you are given to such delusional mindset, you will believe anything. So, all I’m saying is, I think our policy of adjustment and appeasement, terror attack, we would still after a while come back and have talks. And in those talks, they would reiterate their own nonsense. I think the Prime Minister has brought that to a halt. And I think even Pakistan and the others know this now. Our position is very clear. After those 22 minutes of obliteration of 9 of their establishment, their DGMO called our DGMO, asked for cessation of hostilities, we agreed, period.
Navin Berry
As a career diplomat, in the good old days, you had a kind of a pure diplomacy approach. Diplomacy for diplomacy. Then came a period when you had diplomacy plus trade. Trade became a very important instrument as part of diplomacy. Now we are also bringing military.
Hardeep Puri
No, no. Military, economics, economics, defence, economic security, other forms of security have always been part of diplomacy. Diplomacy is only something you add to that.
Navin Berry
But have they now come into the forefront? And is there no central agency that can determine the truth in any situation?
Hardeep Puri
First, all these components have always been there. Always been there. You have economic interest. You have to take the call. How much of diplomacy to use? There is a time as one of the famous British foreign secretaries whom we read in the history books. He said the wheels of diplomacy have to sometimes come to a grinding halt and you have to exercise harder options.
However, today, what you are facing globally is the fact that the peace and security pillar of the world, the UN, is looking very weak. Normally, the one agency which is designated with a task of making a determination whether there is a threat to peace and security, has been the UN Security Council. Today, anybody can go and attack the other person, nobody bothers to go to UN Security Council.
Because the theory of this is that if you think there is a threat to international peace and security, go to the Security Council. UN Security Council will make a determination. If it’s made a determination that’s correct, they will authorize alternative means, that is the use of force. Here, nobody bothers. Go, go, but what? So, yes, to that extent the peace and security pillar embedded in the multilateral system is not being used.
Navin Berry
Would you say we are in a greater state of flux today?
Hardeep Puri
I wouldn’t say that. You see some of these institutions, you can make out a case both ways. I mean we are in an interesting situation. This system was devised post 1945. I was part of an exercise that we undertook within the UN umbrella to make a determination on whether the system was still ‘fit for purpose’. We chose 16 areas under which we studied the issue. So, we can give you good things; that yes, I think the system needs change, but a change will come from the parties. For that you need to go back to a conference of parties and renegotiate the whole system. Even the second world war, even the current UN, actually came into being because it was a crisis, the Second World War was going on, and you needed to find an answer. So, you can be a cynic now and say, well, you need another breakdown, another crisis before you devise a new system.
Navin Berry
In all this flux, in this time and date when there is turmoil in the Middle East, it is a good time to ask another question, more related to your present day turf, what is our oil situation?
Hardeep Puri
We are very comfortable. We are comfortable in the sense that we are a large importer, large consumer, we are also a reasonably large producer, we will be producing more. There is more oil on the international market, of course, there are anxieties.
Navin Berry
What about pricing?
Hardeep Puri
Pricing you see, pricing today it had gone up to 80 plus, then it came down to 60 plus, today it is at around 70 plus – 75 – so today I would say that within this range, if the escalation continues, and go up a little or stay at this level, if it de-escalates, it will come down to 70 and below.
Navin Berry
And how much have you been successful in diversifying our supply sources?
Hardeep Puri
Oh, we have diversified immensely – we used to buy from 27 sources, we now buy from 40 sources, so we are okay. There is more oil coming on the international market, so that is the point.
Navin Berry
And the Americans wanted us to buy more of their oil?
Hardeep Puri
They wanted us to buy. Just now we have been buying some 14 billion dollars of energy from the Americans and if push comes to shove, we’ll buy more. See, we have actually an advantage because we hold the consumer’s card. The two large economies which consume a lot are China and India. The Chinese economy is not consuming more whereas our consumption is going up.
Navin Berry
And where do you see India’s growth story happening right now?
Hardeep Puri
We are the fourth largest, will soon be the third largest economy. Then if our oil E&P picks up and we’ve got green shoots discoveries in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere, we get more oil, our journey to a Viksit Bharat will be accelerated.
Navin Berry
How much does oil and energy play a part of the Viksit Bharat?
Hardeep Puri
Well, the energy sector, my OMCs provide 19% of the country’s revenue. So, it’s a pretty large sector. But more than that, I don’t think we should look at it from the point of what the OMCs do or the private sector. The more important thing is, that if you want to judge how any country is doing, look at their energy consumption, whatever form of energy consumption. If the energy consumption is going up, you can be sure that economic activities are going up.
Navin Berry
To conclude, we cannot not discuss Operation Sindoor and its fallout on Indian politics, that all party delegations visited globally to share our ‘national’ stand on how the retaliation played out?
Hardeep Puri
All of us in India are proud of our economic progress, that we have ‘nation first’ as a shared vision among all political parties, and the progress that has been registered, including in Operation Sindoor, every Indian is proud of it.
Every Indian is proud of the fact that we are today the fourth largest economy, going to be the third largest, that we could be looking at and we have got higher growth rates, much higher than the ones we have overtaken. When we became the fifth largest, we overtook UK. When we became the fourth largest, we overtook Japan. And we will overtake Germany also. But more important that their growth is around 2%, ours is 6.5%. So, it doesn’t require rocket science to understand that you will be the third largest and every Indian is proud.
Also, when we are threatened as a country we stand up and Operation Sindoor, everybody including the opposition, are proud of that.
Navin Berry
The last word, on China? How far we should go in ensuring peace with China?
Hardeep Puri
You will have to come to terms with the rise of China. And I think, what the prime minister said in his podcast and what, with all other measures that are there, you can’t wish a different neighborhood. So, you have to deal with these situations.
Navin Berry
But the PM is determined to keep extending that hand of friendship.
Hardeep Puri
Well, I’ll tell you something. The Prime Minister is one of the most visionary and practical people, I have often said. I’ve worked with a lot of Prime Ministers. He is very clear. And the podcast where he spoke about what needs to be done, I think is a fairly good indicator of where the Prime Minister’s mind is, and where the system should be going.
