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Indian professionals hailed as alternative global voices

SINGAPORE: Are Indian professionals emerging as an “alternative” community that might help balance the West? And, why has India’s rise on the global stage remained unopposed?

These questions were raised at a thematic function organised by the Singapore chapter of the Indian Institutes of Management Alumni Associations, branded as IIMPact.

The Dean of the Singapore-based Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Kishore Mahbubani, said: “The global growth of the IIM community and [its] global impact could not have come at a better time. One reason is: we do need alternative voices in the world today to balance the role that the West has played.”

Speaking at the IIMPact annual event on Saturday night, Prof. Mahbubani hailed the IIM fraternity’s capabilities to raise its voice and try and rectify the “paradoxical” roles being played by the West today.

High Commissioner to Singapore S. Jaishankar posed a series of questions: “Why does India’s rise not evoke international disquiet? Is it because we are less threatening or is it because we are more responsible? Have individual Indians shaped global opinion of India so significantly that people are comfortable with us? Is there an inherent openness or moderation in our approach that works for us? Is the absence of a state-driven engagement with the external world more reassuring to them [the global community]? Does the world see us as a safe pair of hands? And, as a society, therefore, are we likely to get it right? This is something we will really know with time.”

Praising Indian professionals for doing much for the branding of the country abroad, Dr. Jaishankar said this had lightened the burden of its diplomats.

Emphasising the role of professionals to address the paradoxes of the Western roles, Professor Mahbubani said: “After having [exported competence], the West is becoming incompetent in its management of and response to global challenges. [And] if you look at the real history of Western aid, for every dollar that the West [has] paid the Third World, at least 80 cents go back to the donor country in the form of administrative expenses or consultant expenses and so on [and] so forth. [Moreover] the West, [which] has done more than any other force to make us aware of the importance of sustainable development ... may have become the single biggest force opposing solution to [the] sustainable development [problems].”

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