IRELAND HAS nothing to fear from the growth of India as an industrial power, according to its former president speaking on a visit to Dublin.
Dr APJ Abdul Kalam said Ireland’s growing trade relationships with India, particularly in the IT sector, represented a “win-win” opportunity for both countries.
Addressing fears about the outsourcing of Irish jobs to his country, Dr Kalam pointed out that the vast majority of equipment used in Indian computer firms was manufactured in Europe or the US.
“This is the globalised world we live in. To remain a developed country, as Ireland is, or become one, as India dreams, you have to be able to deliver cost-effective, quality products that can reach the market fast. No single nation in the world will be the winner; nations have to join together to achieve their goals.”
Dr Kalam, who gave a lecture in Trinity College Dublin yesterday to promote his vision for transforming India into a developed nation by 2020, highlighted several areas where he believed the two countries could work together productively.
One, he said, was the generation of clean energy as part of the move away from a reliance on fossil fuels.
The other was Ireland’s “core competence” in peacemaking, as highlighted in the Good Friday agreement in 1998. “Ireland, India and the EU should join together to carry out research into the peace process. The world is full of conflict; conflict becomes differences, and differences become war.”
Dr Kalam served as India’s eleventh president from 2002 to 2007; before that, he was involved in the country’s space programme and its nuclear test programme. He trained as an aeronautical engineer.
Yesterday, he defended India’s possession of atomic weapons. “Our nuclear doctrine says no first strike. We are for total nuclear disarmament; the day the US and Russia dismantle their 5,000 weapons, we’ll have no weapons. You can’t preach two standards.”
To coincide with his visit, Trinity yesterday announced two new posts in Indian studies, a lectureship in Indian history funded by the Indian community in Ireland, and a professorship funded by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. Both posts form part of the college’s South Asia Initiative.
