We have to do business with the entire world... China too, but it is important we deal with them confidently: JaishankarAmid the ongoing diplomatic tug-of-war between India and Bangladesh, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday that they have to look at “mutual interests” and meet at a “common ground”.His remarks come at a time when Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s visit to India is facing uncertainty over the issue of extradition of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.Responding to questions on how he views Dhaka’s demand for Hasina’s extradition, Jaishankar said at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum: “I am not going to sit here and discuss what could be or may not be conversations or not between us and a neighbouring country. See, what I can tell you is, for any relationship to work, it has to meet the extent of mutual interest. It has to work for them. It has to work for us. I am also realistic. I am not expecting neighbours to only do what is in my interest. There has to be a fair degree of, a reasonable degree of, my recognising and respecting what is their interest, just as I expect them also to do so. It is when you get that landing point, that common ground, that relationships work smoothly. So, I would say this, in respect of all neighbours, that relationships, at the end of the day, are a kind of mutuality which underpins that exercise.”Ties between the two countries, severely strained following the August 2024 ouster of PM Sheikh Hasina who sought refuge in India, had been looking up after Rahman took charge of Bangladesh in February this year. But Hasina’s public interaction in New Delhi via an audio link on August 5 — it marked two years of her ouster — angered Dhaka, which has been seeking her extradition to Bangladesh where she faces a death sentence. It also cast a shadow over Rahman’s visit to India, which is being explored by the two sides.At a time when the world faces conflicts and intense competition, Jaishankar also said that “de-risking” is the strategy to move forward. “De-risking would be my biggest mantra and the second would be to diversify. So the more partners, more sources that you have, clearly to that extent, you have de-risked it,” he said.“We are finding a very distorted energy market, a very distorted fertiliser market, very distorted shipping. So, because the choke points are creating distortions, once upon a time, they said, ‘trust but verify’; today, I’d say, ‘distrust and diversify’, which assumes that things may not go right. Build it into your plans… don’t let your supply chains really be just in time anymore. Don’t always assume that the lowest cost will be the determinant. Today, you have to build in that margin of safety… energy markets are a very good example. So, even for businesses, I think the supply chains, the more you diversify it, the more you hedge, because you can’t trust the world to work in the most efficient manner because of all these distortions. I think this is the reality of the world, and it applies to national policymakers,” he said.“I think we need to hardwire the risks into our thinking and make de-risking almost like a second habit,” he added.Story continues below this adOn the situation with China, Jaishankar said: “I think we went through a particularly bad patch between the summer of 2020 and the autumn of 2024, and that was primarily an outcome of the situation in the border areas… At the end of the day, peace and tranquility in the border areas is a prerequisite for good relations, and the state of the border, to a very large measure, naturally would determine the state of the relations. Having said that, I think naturally, if assuming things are stable and the needle is more cooperative, obviously, I mean we are both very big economies. In many ways, we are markets to each other. We are part of the supply chain. They industrialised much faster and much bigger and much earlier, largely because of many of the policies we advocate.”“The world is competitive. We must build up our strengths. We have to do business with the entire world. That includes China too, but it is important we deal with them confidently. We stand our ground, as we have stood on the border. We develop our strengths, which unfortunately from the 1960s for half a century, we did not do. We have to make up for the shortcomings and the mistakes of the past, and that is really what we are hoping to do. So I think a stronger, more self-reliant India, a more industrialised India, a more manufacturing India will be able to actually compete with China as it will with other major countries of the world,” Jaishankar said.He said the government has “taken up” the problem of business visas being faced by Indian applicants with China. On the concept of G-2 (US and China), he said: “I would advise you to treat it with some caution because the fact is, if you look at the US-China relationship, I think at its heart it’s a fundamentally competitive relationship. But, as is often the case, it can also be collaborative in certain matters. It can be indifferent in certain sectors… so it’s a very complicated relationship, as is natural.”Shubhajit Roy, Diplomatic Editor at The Indian Express, has been a journalist for more than 27 years now. Roy joined The Indian Express in October 2003 and has been reporting and writing explainers and analysis on foreign affairs for about 19 years now. Based in Delhi, he has also led the National government and political bureau at The Indian Express in Delhi — a team of reporters who cover the national government and politics for the newspaper. He has got the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award for Excellence in Journalism ‘2016. He got this award for his coverage of the Holey Bakery attack in Dhaka and its aftermath. He won the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award, 2023, for the second time for his reporting of the Oct 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza. He also got the IIMCAA Award for the Journalist of the Year, 2022, (Jury’s special mention) for his coverage of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 — he was one of the few Indian journalists in Kabul and the only mainstream newspaper to have covered the Taliban’s capture of power in mid-August, 2021. ... Read More