India as largest contributor to global peacekeeping
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi closed the second day of the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit with a speech on India’s growing ambition of becoming a global peacekeeping and peace-enforcing power.
Photo from PMIndia
“If any country in the world is the largest contributor to global peacekeeping, then it is India. In many restive areas of the world, Indian peacekeepers are present,” he emphasized.
In his keynote speech, he talked about the future of Southern and Southeast Asia as growth engines of the world and India’s role in the Indo-Pacific region on November 13, Monday.
Joining the meeting composed of a non-resident Indian community, Modi said that India has sacrificed lives for world peace, even informing U.S President Donald Trump about the role of India on the welfare of humanity.
“I have come to a nation and a region that is very important to India,” Modi said to the audience at the Solaire Grand Ballroom.
“For India, the land of Buddha and Gandhi, peace is not just a word, peace is in our veins. We certainly have never snatched anything from anybody in the past.”
Modi also highlighted the roll-out of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as well as measures for bankruptcy and insolvency proceedings, as part of the policies that lead to transparency in the financial sector.
Besides sporting government policies on the demonetisation of high value currency notes and the Aadhaar database linking with transactions, he said his efforts are for making India a more transparent nation and to ensure that everything levels up to global standards.
“We are using our Unique ID system in financial transactions and taxation for this purpose and the results are already visible. These steps, coupled with demonetisation of high-value notes has resulted in formalising a large part of our economy,” Modi explained.
He also added that the taxpayers who filed the returns have surged and that India is already moving towards becoming a cashless economy as suggested by the number of digital transactions taking place in the country.
Modi also talked about the repealing of 1,200 outdated laws in the last three years and simplification of procedure for investors to do business in India, such as the 'Act East' policy that puts the ASEAN region at the centre of India's engagement. He said that India has become a globally integrated economy.
"We have exceptionally good political and people-to-people relations with each and every country in the ASEAN region. We wish to bring our economic and business relations up to the same level," he said.
