Press Secretary to President (Shri Venu Rajamony): Good evening friends. We do not have an army this time like we normally do. It is a small group but a very important group. You know the Foreign Secretary. Ambassador Raghavan has also joined us, for those who have not met him before, and we have Shambhu Kumar who is the Joint Secretary in charge of the ERS Division of MEA. The Foreign Secretary will open with a brief statement and I would request the Ambassador to add on anything he may wish to say, and then of course we can open the floor for questions.
Foreign Secretary (Dr. S. Jaishankar): Good evening. In terms of the President’s programme, this morning there was the conferment of an Honourary Doctorate by the Diplomatic Academy on the President. I think many of you attended that event. The highlight of that was the President’s acceptance speech after the conferment of the Doctorate.
I would just flag your attention to the intent or the message of that speech in a way because at one level it was a sort of a big picture understanding of our relationship with Russia but it also laid out the contours of our future relationship with Russia. It underlined really the strength of the relationship, our confidence in the prospects of that relationship, and the commitment on our part to move forward on the understandings that were reached when President Putin was last in India in 2014.
In the afternoon there was an event at the Moscow State University which involved Rectors of major Russian universities and institutions as well as Directors of our Institutes of Technology and Vice Chancellors of some important universities. There were a number of agreements signed. I think perhaps I would like Ambassador to come in after me and explain to you what this was about because when we talk in terms of developing the relationship between India and Russia and making it more contemporary to my mind this was a very good example of what happened.
Later in the afternoon, our President had a meeting with the President of Serbia Mr. Tomislav Nikolić who is also here for the same event. In their discussions I think the two Presidents felt that more efforts need to be made to build on the great reservoir of goodwill that exists for each other in India and Serbia. They recalled the era of friendship which goes back to Nehru and Tito. They discussed a range of bilateral cooperation possibilities as well as regional and international issues to which the two of us attached importance.
If I were to give you a sense of some of the topics which were addressed, reference was made to the BRICS by the Serbian President as a growing international grouping. In fact, he spoke of the influence of Indian media, especially Indian TV shows in Serbia which he said were very popular. There was appreciation of the stand which we have taken on Kosovo. He expressed support for India’s permanent candidature for the UN Security Council. And there was a broad discussion on the state of affairs in Europe, Serbia’s perspective.
In the case of India there was some discussion; Serbia has had some natural disaster, flooding. So that topic really led to some discussion of what had happened in Nepal; and President spoke at some length about how we saw it and what were the efforts that we had made in response to that. So, that broadly is a summary of the day today. In the case of Serbia, the need for high-level visits was a factor, and President actually extended an invitation to the President of Serbia to visit India.
So, why don’t I stop with those preliminary remarks? Perhaps we could up any questions that you might have.
Indian Ambassador to Russia (Shri P.S. Raghavan): I will simply expand on the education content of today’s meeting. This really flowed out of the Joint Statement issued after President Putin’s visit to India about the agreement between the two countries to strengthen links between institutions of higher education. The expression used in the Joint Statement was ‘network of partnership between universities’. The President mentioned this in a speech actually.
We have had a very long connection with the Soviet Union and then Russia in education when tens of thousands of Indian students used to study here, and study in various disciplines and in certain very specialised areas. That number has fallen to about 4,000 now because there has been a movement of Indian students towards more English-speaking universities around the world where opportunities have expanded of course; and in the 90s there was a disruption in the system in Russia which also caused the diversion of Indian students from here to elsewhere.
What was recognised during President Putin’s visit is, both the new Government in India and the Government today in Russia are laying a lot of emphasis on research and innovation, on creation of utilisable technologies, on linking up research with technologies which can be commercialised. So, there is really a lot of opportunity in cooperation between our research institutions, our universities and Russian universities. Russia has been in the forefront of a very large number of technologies particularly in material sciences, in aviation, in space, aerospace, oil and gas. So, these are areas where our students can really benefit from exposure to research linkages with Russia.
By the way there is one more agreement which was signed today which sort of got lost track of in the memoranda of understanding between universities. This is an agreement between our Department of Science and Technology and the Russian Science Foundation which is co-funding for joint research programmes between a number of Indian and Russian universities. Also a little later after the President left they announced the agreement between Department of Science and Technology and the Russian Ministry of Education and Science for co-funding 49 joint research programmes, again between research institutions.
So, it is really something that has very great potential linking universities to promote faculty exchanges, to promote student exchanges, and to promote post-doctoral and doctoral research to be done jointly between universities. It has great prospect, it adds an important strand to the India-Russia relationship which already is diverse, as you know. I think I will stop with this.
Press Secretary to President: Any questions?
Question: Could you give us more details on the kind of research that would be done? Can you be a little more specific on that?
Ambassador to Russia: We can actually release the actual research topics which have been funded. They are very technical. They are essentially in areas like aerospace, they are in areas like biotechnology, in organic and inorganic chemistry there are a number of projects, there are a number of projects in material sciences. The 49 that have been funded we can actually release the list if it makes sense to you. They are all science and technology and they are very technical. But they show that there is actually deep interest in this collaboration, and Governments are essentially acting as catalysts to deepen this link.
Question: With aerospace …(Inaudible)… in the President’s speech he also mentioned this is 40th year of Aryabhatta. Could you give more details on that?
Ambassador to Russia: That is right. In fact, separately there is discussion between our ISRO and the Russian Space Agency for appropriately celebrating this 40th anniversary of Aryabhatta which actually comes up later this year. There is an elaborate programme that is being worked out for reinvigorating our space cooperation.
Aerospace has been one of Russia’s greatest things. Even today the Moscow Aviation Institute has Indian students studying in it. There were many more Indian students studying in aerospace institutions around the country. Those institutions now have engaged in research collaboration with some of our IITs as well. Those are also among the projects that are being covered under the original agreement which I have mentioned to you and which would be covered under the agreement that was concluded today with the Russian Science Foundation.
Question: Foreign Secretary, could you tell us a little bit about the bilateral meeting that President Mukherjee is going to have with President Putin tomorrow, what are the sort of issues that will come up? And last month the Ukrainian Parliament voted to declassify documents that essentially relate to the alleged incarceration of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in Kirkuk’s prison. Will the issue of Netaji and where he might have been if he survived the plane crash come up in President Mukherjee’s conversation?
Foreign Secretary: As a matter of principle I am very hesitant to comment on or to predict future conversations. What the President would say to President Putin, we would be very happy to brief you after he said it. So, please bear with us for a day.
I think the messaging today in a sense was, if you look at the President’s speech and I sort of focus your attention back at it, he tried to capture the enormous goodwill really which underpins the India-Russia relationship which actually frankly makes it a very unique relationship. That is because I cannot think of many other relationships we have where I would say to the average Indian person, not necessarily people like you or people like us but to the average person, there is such a strong sense of empathy or support to the relationship. And I think the Russian relationship that way is a very unique relationship.
But you had a very clear message today that Russia is and will remain our most important defence partner, and that it is a key partner of our energy security. You had a clear message today that we recognise the role that Russia plays in important international and regional issues. You had a message that Russia has been a pillar of strength at difficult moments of Indian history and that we reciprocate this support, and the message that President Putin’s personal commitment has really led this relationship in recent years and we really see him as a very great friend of India.
I think if you put all of this together you can draw your own deductions of what is likely to happen tomorrow. But what really happens tomorrow, wait for us to tell you tomorrow.
Press Secretary to President: Thank you.