India will never join any alliance: Jaishankar

New Delhi: India will never join any alliance system in the future too just as it never did in the past, External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar told a TV channel on Monday. He also said that the growth of China in the past more than three decades  was much more rapid than that of India and that this “gap” between the two countries has certain “implications”.

Jaishankar also conceded that there was an element of bipolarity between the United States and China in today’s multilateral world. The EAM’s comments come in the wake of resurgent Sino-Indian military tensions in the past few months and India’s increasing proximity to the United States.

On the economic front, the EAM said that the world is heading for a “protectionist global economy” and that the Coronavirus pandemic would “accelerate” this trend. On the issue of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), Jaishankar indicated that at least some of the FTAs inked by India in the past “have not served us (India) well”.

On China, the EAM  said China must be given credit for its impressive growth in the past few decades including sweeping economic, administrative and social reform, adding that its growth was much faster than India. He pointed out that 32 years ago in 1988 when the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had made a visit to China, the size of the two economies was roughly the same, indicating just how fast the Chinese economy had grown since then.