India needs a decisive govt for next 10 years, says NSA Doval
NEW DELHI: India needs a strong, stable and decisive government for the next 10 years to achieve its political, economic and strategic objectives, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval said on Thursday, stressing that “weakened democracy makes a country a soft power”.
Delivering the Sardar Patel memorial lecture on ‘Dream India 2030-avoiding the pitfalls’, Doval said, “If it [country] becomes a soft power, you have to make compromises. And when you have to make compromises, your political survival takes precedence over national interest.”
“Unstable regimes”, he added, were more vulnerable to corruption as local political interests took precedence.
The NSA also pushed for indigenisation of defence equipment. “There is nothing like 70% or 80% indigenisation, we have to produce 100% defence equipment in India...,” he said.
To buttress his argument, Doval referred to India’s 15th position on the global power ranking index, claiming that even smaller countries such as Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia were ahead, because India had not built its hard power.
The NSA further cautioned against the tendency to dub any government support to private sector as corruption. “Private sector is not traitor…country cannot economically prosper unless private sector becomes strong. We are afraid of promoting our private sector,” he said, citing the examples of China and the USA, where the sector works in tandem with the government.
Highlighting the threats facing democracy, Doval said the erosion of the national will and accepting false narratives “can be debilitating for a nation”.
“It is the responsibility of all to erode the strength of false narrative...,” he added.