Indian Foreign Policy Towards Pakistan

[Penny Bozic]

Yourwillingness to serve is critical for all that lies ahead once you finish your education. Because the truth is pretty soon the responsibilities for building our future will fall to all of you. Soon we're going to be looking to your generation to make the discoveries and build the industries that will shape our world for decades to come.

We'll be looking to you to protect our planet. We're going to be looking to you to lift up our most vulnerable citizens. We're going to be looking to you to heal the divisions that too often keep us apart. And I believe that you and your peers around the world are more than up to the challenge, because I've seen it firsthand right here in India.

These young volunteers understand and believe in something very simple, that all children, regardless of their circumstances, deserve the same chance to get educated and to build productive and successful lives. And I know that many of you here today are doing equally important work in your communities and your schools -- everything from holding camps for kids in need to teaching computer literacy skills, to finding new ways to conserve energy.

And let me tell you, this work is amazing, and it is vitally important. And that is why, as First Lady, I have tried my best to engage young people not just in the United States but around the world, letting them know that we believe in them, but more importantly, that we need them. We need you. We need you to help solve the great challenges of our time.

Right now, more Indian students like you come to study in the United States than from any other country. And I'm proud to see that so many American students are doing the same thing right here in India, building the types of friendships and relationships that will last a lifetime. Our hope is to provide more Indian and American young people with these types of opportunities to continue to connect and share ideas and experiences.

And finally, my husband is also working to encourage young entrepreneurs everywhere to start businesses, to improve the health of our communities and to empower our young women and girls because it is never too late or too early to start changing this world for the better.

So I want to end today by congratulating you all -- congratulating you on everything you do. We are so proud of you. I want to encourage you to keep dreams -- keep dreaming big huge, gigantic dreams -- not just for yourselves, but for your communities and for our world.

And finally, I want to urge you today to ask my husband some tough questions, all right? (Laughter.) Be tough. He loves doing events like this. This brightens his days. But you got to keep him on his toes, all right?

We share a commitment to see that this era after globalization leads to greater opportunity for all our people. And so yesterday, at a summit of business leaders and entrepreneurs, we discussed the potential for greater economic cooperation between our two countries -- cooperation that could create jobs and opportunity through increased trade and investment, unleashing the potential of individuals in both our countries. And even as we are countries that look to the future with optimism, Americans and Indians draw strength from tradition and from faith.

This morning, Michelle and I enjoyed the chance to join young people here in Mumbai to celebrate Diwali -- a holiday that is observed not just here in India but also in the United States, where millions of Indian-Americans have enriched our country. I have to point out, by the way, those of you who had a chance to see Michelle dance, she was moving. (Laughter.) And it was just an extraordinary gift for these young people to perform and share this wonderful tradition with us.

And together with the United States, you can also seize the opportunities afforded by our times: the clean energy technologies that can power our lives and save our planet; the chance to reach new frontiers in outer space; the research and development that can lead to new industry and a higher standard of living; the prospect of advancing the cause of peace and pluralism in our own countries but also beyond our borders.

Which brings me to a second question. Twenty years from now, what kind of partnership do you want to have with America? Just before I came to speak to all of you today, I visited two expos right in another courtyard here that underscore the kind of progress we can make together. The first focused on agriculture and food security, and I was able to see innovations in technology and research, which are transforming Indian farming.

A farmer showed me how he can receive crop information on his cell phone. Another showed me how tools appropriately sized and weighted for women are helping her and other female farmers increase their productivity. Many of these innovations are the result of public and private collaborations between the United States and India, the same collaboration that helped produce the first Green Revolution in the 1960s.

And tomorrow, I will be discussing with Prime Minister Singh how we can advance the cooperation in the 21st century -- not only to benefit India, not only to benefit the United States, but to benefit the world. India can become a model for countries around the world that are striving for food security.

The second expo I toured focused on the ways that innovation is empowering Indian citizens to ensure that democracy delivers for them. So I heard directly from citizens in a village hundreds of miles away, through e-panchayat. I saw new technologies and approaches that allow citizens to get information, or to fight corruption, monitor elections, find out whether their elected official is actually going to work, holding government accountable.

So even as we do not impose any system of government on other countries, we, especially young people, must always speak out for those human rights that are universal, and the right of people everywhere to make their own decisions about how to shape their future, which will bring me to my final question, and then you guys can start sending questions my way.

As I stood in Mani Bhavan, I was reminded that Martin Luther King made his own pilgrimage to that site over 50 years ago. In fact, we saw the book that he had signed. After he returned home, King said that he was struck by how Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation.

And sometimes the challenges may be incredibly hard, and in the face of darkness, we may get discouraged. But we can always draw on the light of those who came before us. I hope you keep that light burning within you, because together the United States and India can shape a century in which our own citizens and the people of the world can claim the hope of a better life.

So we have I think people in the audience with microphones, and so when they come up, if you could introduce yourself -- love to know who you are. And we'll start with that young lady right over there.

I think a lot of these ideas form very early. And how you respond to each other is going to be probably as important as any speech that a President makes in encouraging the kinds of religious tolerance that I think is so necessary in a world that's getting smaller and smaller, where more and more people of different backgrounds, different races, different ethnicities are interacting and working and learning from each other.

Q Hello. I actually wanted to ask you -- you mention Mahatma Gandhi a lot usually in your speeches. So I was just wondering how exactly do you implement his principles and his values in your day-to-day life, and how do you expect the people in the U.S. to live in those values? Thank you.

But it also requires me to make some midcourse corrections and adjustments. And how those play themselves out over the next several months will be a matter of me being in discussions with the Republican Party, which is now going to be controlling the House of Representatives. And there are going to be areas where we disagree and hopefully there are going to be some areas where we agree.

Now, you asked specifically, how do I think it will affect policy towards India. I actually think that the United States has a enormous fondness for India, partly because there are so many Indian-Americans and because of the shared values that we have. And so there is a strong bipartisan belief that India is going to be a critical partner with the United States in the 21st century. That was true when George Bush was President. That was true when Bill Clinton was President. It was true under Democratic and Republican control of Congress.

And that's potentially healthy. It makes -- Michelle was saying earlier I like tough questions because it keeps me on my toes. Well, this will keep America on its toes. And I'm positive we can compete because we've got the most open, most dynamic entrepreneurial culture; we've got some of the finest universities in the world; incredible research and technology. But it means that we're going to have to compete.

If the American people feel that trade is just a one-way street, where everybody is selling to the enormous U.S. market but we can never sell what we make anywhere else, then people in the United States will start thinking, well, this is a bad deal for us. And that could end up leading to a more protectionist instinct in both parties -- not just among Democrats, but also among Republicans. So that's what we have to guard against.

Q I'm from H.R. College of Commerce and Economics. We were the privileged college to host Mr. Otis Moss this January. Sir, my question to you is why is Pakistan so important an ally to America, so far as America has never called it a terrorist state?

The Pakistani government is very aware of that. And what we have tried to do over the last several years, certainly -- I'll just speak to my foreign policy -- has been to engage aggressively with the Pakistani government to communicate that we want nothing more than a stable, prosperous, peaceful Pakistan, and that we will work with the Pakistani government in order to eradicate this extremism that we consider a cancer within the country that can potentially engulf the country.

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