Tag: foreign minister jaishankar

‘Bear With Us, Focused on Addressing It’: Blinken on US Visa Backlog for Indians

US visa services are trying to clear a backlog after Washington halted almost all visa processing worldwide in March, 2020 due to the pandemic.

Washington: External affairs minister S. Jaishankar, in his meeting with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, September 27, raised the issue of the backlog of visa applications from India to which the top American diplomat said he is sensitive to the matter and had a plan to address it.

“It is also in our mutual interest to facilitate the development and mobility of talent. We agreed that impediments over this should be addressed,” Jaishankar told reporters during a joint media availability with Blinken at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department here following their over an hour-long meeting.

US visa services are trying to clear a backlog after Washington halted almost all visa processing worldwide in March, 2020 due to the pandemic.

Also read: For Many Indian Students, Their American Dream Is in Limbo

Indians make up a large proportion of the recipients of H-1B and other work visas granted to skilled foreign workers, many in the tech industry. The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.

The Indian minister did not specifically mention the H-1B visas issue during the joint presser.

“There is a keen interest in India’s national education policy and we will explore how that can best serve to expand our partnership,” Jaishankar said.

“On mobility, specifically visas, this is particularly crucial given its centrality to education, business, technology, and family reunions,” he said.

“There have been some challenges of late, and I flagged it to Secretary Blinken and his team, and I have every confidence that they will look at some of these problems seriously and positively,” Jaishankar said.

“Bear with us. This will play out over the next few months, but we’re very focused on it,” Blinken said in response to a question when asked about the historic delays in visa appointments that now runs into 800 days.

On the question of visas, “I’m extremely sensitive to this,” Blinken said. Blinken blamed the COVID-19 pandemic for a backlog of visa applications from Indian nationals.

“If it’s any consolation, I can tell you that this is a challenge that we’re facing around the world and it’s a product largely of the COVID pandemic. Our ability to issue visas dropped dramatically during COVID,” he said as he explained the self-financing part of the issuing of visas.

“When COVID hit, the demand for visas fell through the floor, visa fees went away, the system, as a whole, suffered. And then of course, in actually issuing visas, even with much more limited resources, we had constraints from COVID about the number of people we could have in our embassies at any one time, etc,” he said.

Blinken said he had a plan to deal with it.

“We are now building back very determinedly from that surging resource. We have a plan, when it comes to India, to address the backlog of visas that has built up. I think you’ll see that play out in the coming months,” he said.

“But it’s something that we’re very focused on. These connections, these people-to-people ties, whether it’s students, whether it’s business people, whether it’s tourists, whether it’s family, this is what really links us together,” Blinken said.

“The last thing we want to do is make that any more difficult in the country we want to facilitate it,” said the US Secretary of State.

(PTI)

Jaishankar Criticises American Media For ‘Biased’ Coverage of India

‘I look at the media. You know, there are some newspapers you know, exactly, what they are going to write including one in this town.’

Washington: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has slammed the mainstream American media, including The Washington Post, for their “biased” coverage of India.

“I look at the media. You know, there are some newspapers you know, exactly, what they are going to write including one in this town,” Jaishankar told a gathering of Indian-Americans from across the country amidst laughter and applause on Sunday.

The prestigious Washington Post is the national daily published from Washington DC and is currently being owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

“My point is there are biases, there are efforts really, to determine,…Look, the more India goes its way and the people who believe that they were the custodians and the shapers of India lose ground in India the more actually, some of these debaters gonna come outside,” Jaishankar said responding to a question on the increase in anti-Indian forces in this country.

Such groups, he asserted, are “not winning in India”. Such groups, the minister noted, will try and win outside or try and shape India from outside.

“This is something which we need to be aware of. It is important to contest. It isn’t because most Americans will not know what sort of the nuances and the complexities of back home, so, it’s important not to sit back, not to let other people define me. That is something which I feel as a community is very important for us,” he said.

Responding to a question on misrepresentation of the Kashmir issue in the American capital, Jaishankar said if there is a terrorist incident, it doesn’t matter what faith the person who’s killed belongs to.

“If there are Indian soldiers or Indian policemen who are abducted; If there are people working for the government, or citizens going about their business, who will lose their lives?,” he added.

“How often do you hear people talking about it; pronouncing it, in fact, look at the media coverage. What does the media cover what does the media not cover?,” the External Affairs Minister asked.

That is how actually opinions and perceptions are shaped, he underlined.

“There is a big song and dance about the Internet being cut. Now, if you’ve reached the stage where you say an Internet cut is more dangerous than the loss of human lives, then what can I say?” Jaishankar said amidst applause from the audience.

“If you look at A (Article) 370-issue. What was a temporary provision of the Constitution was finally put to rest this was supposed to be an act of majority. This was supposed to be majoritarian. Tell me what was happening in Kashmir was not majoritarian?, I think the way facts are slanted, things are laid out. What is right, what is wrong is confused. This is actually politics at work.

“We should not let it go. We should contest it. We should educate. We should shape the narrative. This is a competitive world. We need to get our messages out. That is my message to you,” he said.

“We are not serving our country well or our beliefs well, or even our sense of what is right and wrong but by staying out of these debates. I think we have opinions we must express them we must share it with people, we must educate others on what is right and what is wrong.

“I honestly believe that if you look at the whole 370 the Jammu and Kashmir situation, to me it’s mind boggling. Something whose merits were so obvious, should actually there even be people who would think different way,” Jaishankar said.

(PTI)

In First Meeting After Biden Inauguration, Quad Foreign Ministers Ponder Over Myanmar

The usual buzzwords of “free and open” Indo-Pacific, the rule of law and ASEAN centrality also featured in the separate statements issued by India, the US, Japan and Australia.

New Delhi: The continuing fallout from the Myanmar military takeover was one of the topics broached in the conference call between the foreign ministers of India, US, Japan and Australia, which also marked the first meeting of the ‘Quad’ after the new Joe Biden administration took over.

On Thursday, the 90-minute-long phone call was the third ministerial-level meeting of the Quad; the first was in New York in September 2019, followed by their second outing in Tokyo in October 2020.

It was the first time that US secretary of state Anthony Blinken had taken part in a Quad meeting, even though he had already spoken to the three other foreign ministers on the phone separately.

In the continuing tradition of the resumed Quad meetings since 2017, there was no joint statement but separate press releases by the four foreign offices, which had overlaps but also divergences based on their national priority.

The usual buzzwords of “free and open” Indo-Pacific, the rule of law and ASEAN centrality featured in the statement. Japan and India pointedly noted that there was increasing support for the concept of Indo-Pacific, especially from Europe.

All the press releases noted that the exchange of views was around current topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, counter-terrorism, maritime security, cybersecurity, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), supply chain resilience and Myanmar.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs stated that the ministers highlighted their “shared attributes as political democracies, market economies and pluralistic societies”. The Indian readout said the “changes” in the world makes a “strong case for their countries working closely together”. “It was important for the international community that the direction of changes remains positive and beneficial to all,” it added.


Australia described the Quad as “bringing together four like-minded democracies committed to respecting and upholding international rules and obligations through positive, practical engagement to protect and support the sovereignty, prosperity and security of the region”.

The Japanese foreign ministry’s press release was more explicit in pointing fingers at China. The four ministers “shared the recognition that the existing international order has been under challenge in various fields including unilateral attempts to change the status quo”, noted Japan.

According to Tokyo’s readout, the four ministers “concurred to strongly oppose unilateral and forceful attempts to change the status quo in the context of the East and South China Sea”. However, there was no reference to the East and South China sea in statements from India, Australia or the US.


There was a common mention of Myanmar in all the press releases, but the emphasis was varied.

Incidentally, India didn’t refer to any consensus but only noted minister S. Jaishankar’s remarks on the developments of February 1, when the Myanmar military declared an emergency and detained all elected leaders. “In the discussion pertaining to recent developments in Myanmar, the upholding of rule of law and the democratic transition was reiterated by India,” the read out said.

Australia also employed similar phrases to assert its commitment to Myanmar’s “democratic transition”, while labelling the developments as a “military coup”.

The US claimed that the ministers discussed “the urgent need to restore the democratically elected government in Burma” and the “priority of strengthening democratic resilience in the broader region”.

However, the most detailed remarks on the developments in the south-east Asian nation was issued by Japan, with foreign minister Motegi expressing grave concern about the “deteriorating situation in Myanmar”.

He stated that Japan, one of Myanmar’s largest donors, had told the military junta to “immediately stop violence against citizens including shootings” and release all the detained politicians, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

Echoing language used by the US, the Japanese statement also added that the “four ministers shared the view on the need to recover the democratic regime early”.

While India and Australia stated that they looked forward to regular ministerial-level Quad meetings, only Japan and the US mentioned that it will be held on an annual basis.

‘No Country Welcomes Everyone As Citizens’: Jaishankar at CAA Critics

The external affairs minister also sought to debunk the bad press the CAA has been getting globally with the words, “There are sections of the world outside of the media.”

New Delhi: No country in the world welcomes everyone as citizens, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday, hitting out at those criticising India on the new citizenship law.

He also slammed the United Nations Human Rights Council for expressing concern over the situation in Kashmir, saying its position on the issue was wrong in the past as well.

“We have tried to reduce the number of stateless people through this legislation. That should be appreciated,” he said at the ET Global Business Summit when asked about the growing criticism of India over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

In an unprecedented move, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights approached the Supreme Court against the new citizenship law earlier this week.

Also read: Jaishankar on US-Taliban Agreement: Real Negotiations in Afghanistan Start Now

Asked if India was losing its friends over the CAA, Jaishankar said, “Maybe we are getting to know who our friends really are.”

He stoutly defended the law, saying every country follows certain social criteria to grant citizenship, adding: “We have done it in a way that we do not create a bigger problem for ourselves.”

“Everybody, when they look at citizenship, has a context and has a criterion. Show me a country in the world which says everybody in the world is welcome. Nobody does that. Look at America. Look at the Europeans. I can give you an example of every European country. There is some social criterion,” he noted.

A number of countries have questioned India over the CAA but the government has rejected the criticism, calling it an internal matter of the country.

Massive protests took place across India in the last two months over the new law with the opposition parties and rights groups terming it as violative of the founding principles of the Constitution.

Fifty-three people have been killed and over 200 injured last month as supporters of the CAA and its opponents resorted to violence clashed in North East Delhi.

The new law provides for granting citizenship to non-Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who are victims of religious persecution.

Asked about criticism of India by the director of the UN rights on the Kashmir issue, Jaishankar said, “UNHRC director has been wrong before. How carefully they (UNHRC) skirt around the cross-border terrorism problem as if it has nothing to do with the country next door. Please understand where they are coming from; look at UNHRC’s record how they handled the issue earlier.”

He said it is a kind of geopolitical assessment as there was a time when India was very defensive, its capabilities were less, threats were more and risks were higher.

“We adopted a policy of managing the world but kind of staying away. We can’t do that anymore. We are the 5th largest economy in the world and will be the third-largest. We have to engage everybody and find solutions,” he said.

“In a sense, you would have geopolitical constituency out there in the world. There will be people who understand the changes in India, who agree with it, there are people who may not agree with it. I would not mix the two. I would not mix apples and oranges. I think these are two different processes at work. But, I will come out ahead at the end of it,” the external affairs minister said.

In opposition to the CAA and whether India has not been able to convince the world enough, he said, “There are sections of the world outside of the media.”

He noted that he has engaged with governments and cited the example when in Brussels, he had 27 foreign ministers in a room to whom he was talking.

“The point we make on CAA is that it cannot be anybody’s case that a government or Parliament doesn’t have the right to set the terms of naturalisation or citizenship. Every government does that, every Parliament does that.

“What we have tried to do is, we have a large number of stateless people. We have tried to reduce a large number of stateless people we have in this country through this legislation. That should be appreciated. We have done it in a way that we do not create a bigger problem for ourselves. Everybody, when they look at citizenship, have a context and has a criterion,” he said.

“We can’t let governance challengers go unaddressed. It’s not the mindset of this government to just let important issues pass without decisively addressing them, which should have been addressed earlier. When you address that you disturb the status quo.

“People have proclaimed themselves of political correctness and arbiters of public policy, obviously be get ruffled. Obviously, there will be public debates and those debates are legitimate and are happening in India as well as outside,” the minister noted.

He said technology has always been the driver of global politics and never more so than now.

Also read: Explained: Is the US-Taliban Accord Already Doomed?

“Its promise, especially for a society for India with a natural interest in leapfrogging, is enormous. We are seeing that unfold most of all in the digital domain.

“As we all know, this has created its own issues of data protection and data security. But from the vantage point of foreign policy, there are some aspects that need greater deliberation as a national approach,” he said.

“In a world that is more narrowly economic, trade negotiations have acquired a higher profile in international affairs. Much of that arises from the behaviour of America, the strategy of China, the approach of Japan and the focus of Europe. As a nation that is still to integrate itself into global supply chains, develop its infrastructure and scale up its capabilities, these are not easy times.”

Jaishankar said obviously in a globalised world, no economy can be an island unto itself.

“But the exercise of engagement and its terms must be very objectively assessed. Trade outcomes must be primarily justified by trade calculations, not by political correctness. Their gains must be visible, probable and practical; not just hypothetical scenarios,” he said.

“The rise of India is underway. And it is based, amongst others, on the rise of Indian businesses. Many of them operate abroad and as per global norms, expect the support of their Government. They are entitled to it and our obligation is to provide it. Their quest to expand market share and penetrate new markets is entirely understandable. Here too, they deserve full backing and I can assure you, will get it,” he said.

Jaishankar Defends Centre’s 370, CAA Moves; Says No ‘Tukde Tukde Gang’ in JNU ‘During My Time’

The external affairs minister argued that the policy decisions reflect the “problem solving” mindset of the Narendra Modi administration.

New Delhi: A day after JNU students and teachers were violently attacked, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said that his view was reflected in his Sunday tweet “unequivocally” condemning the violence, even as he deflected a question on the demonisation of the university.

The minister was speaking at a function to mark the launch of a book, Pax Sinica: Implications for the Indian Dawn, written by Samir Saran and Akhil Deo.

Defending the current government’s actions on Section 370 in Kashmir and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), Jaishankar argued that these were part of the “problem solving” mindset of the Narendra Modi administration. He claimed that the difference between China and India was that the former’s entire system was geared towards ‘solving’ problems.

After a short conversation between Saran and Jaishankar, the audience was asked to pose questions to the minister.

The second part of a question was framed to highlight that one area where India had an “upper hand” vis-à-vis China was its “democratic principles”.

“How do you then reconcile it with the current government’s narrative where the dissenters, students, anybody who criticises is labelled as anti-nationals. And I have to ask this question because you are a JNU alumnus, do you consider whether JNU has become a hub for ‘tukde tukde’ gang?” asked the journalist. The audience tittered and there was scattered applause.

Also Read: The Message After JNU Attack Is Clear: No Space Is Safe

Specifically answering to this question, Jaishankar replied, “On your JNU issue, what I had to say on JNU, I said yesterday. It was very clear. And I can certainly tell you, when I studied in JNU, we didn’t see any tukde tukde gang”.

On Sunday evening, Jaishankar had tweeted that he had seen pictures and condemned the “violence unequivocally”. “This is completely against the tradition and culture of the university,” he stated. These words were also echoed by another JNU alumni in the cabinet, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Photo: Reuters

Solving ‘legacy’ problems

Earlier in the evening, he said that his main takeaway from studying the Chinese system during his term as Indian ambassador to Beijing was to acknowledge its ability to solve ‘problems’.

“Obviously china’s sociology is different, culture is different, politics is different. One way is to look at it and be in awe of it. There are times when people were in denial of it. Less people are in denial of it. For me the big lesson would be to look at them, study them and ask yourself, what can I learn. What is it they have done which in a way is relevant to us”.

Stating that India was also on the same journey as China “from a civilisational society to a modern state”, he said that the difference between the two neighbours was that “the Chinese look at a problem and start thinking how do we solve it”. “The whole system is a problem-solving system. I call them engineering societies”.

“With a little bit of exaggeration,” Jaishankar noted that in India, the tendency was to “kick the problem down the road”.

“We have accumulated a legacy of problems. These problems have caught up with us. Lot of what we are doing is an accumulation of problems we have not addressed,” he said.

Jaishankar then argued that recent steps, from the CAA to the dilution of Article 370 and even the recent Ayodhya judgment were examples of the government’s decisiveness.

“Last few years have been very active years of debate, argumentation and decision-making. We tend to see them as individual issues, with some reason. But I see them as a trend”.

Citing the CAA, Jaishankar said, “Just look at this year.  Look at the citizenship issue. Citizenship issue started 40-50 years ago. Rajiv Gandhi did an agreement in Assam in 1985”.

Following the passage of the CAA, street protests erupted immediately across Assam and are still continuing. The intensity of these protests even led to the cancellation of the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to India, since the India-Japan summit was to be held in Guwahati.

The protestors are opposed to the Act as they do not want any more any migrants from Bangladesh to settle in Assam, irrespective of their religion. The 2019 Act allows fast-track citizenship for six non-Muslim religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, if they entered India before December 31, 2014. The protestors have pointed out that the CAA violates the Assam Accord, as the latter’s cut-off date was March 24, 1971.

Activists of All Assam Students Union take part in a torch rally against the amended Citizenship Act, in Guwahati, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020.

The protests in the rest of the country against the CAA are largely against the introduction of religious criteria for citizenship.

Jaishankar then gave an example of the dilution of Article 370 – which removed Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomous status – as an example of the “decisiveness” of the government to tackle “legacy” problems.

Then, he also mentioned the Ayodhya issue. “Look at Ayodhya. Show me where in the world, would you find an unresolved problem for 150 years. We let problems go on for 50, 70 years and 150 years”.

In November last year, the Supreme Court gave a final order in the Ayodhya dispute, which handed over the site to Hindu groups.

The foreign minister also used the Goods and Service Tax (GST), introduced in 2016, as another example of the “legacy problems”. “People kept kicking it down the road… I am not pointing fingers at who did it, because different people did it at different times”.

Also Read: Goa Higher Education Board to Incorporate Chapter on GST in Class XI Syllabus

Incidentally, PM Modi, as the chief minister of Gujarat, had objected to the introduction of GST during the UPA regime.

“The big learning out of China is that unless a society has the mindset to decisively address their current issue, you won’t go up in the world,” said Jaishankar.

He also stated that the Chinese had been “preparing” for a long time to become a big power. He noted that films used to be shown in China about the rise and fall of UK and other countries to study their trajectory. “You don’t get to be a big-league power by evolution and accident. It takes leadership, it takes preparation and diligence”.

One of the ingredients was for a country to put out a “coherentness” on issues that “really matter to us”. “Something like territorial integrity is a core interest. Therefore, it has to be made clear that if there is a situation of violation of territorial integrity, then we won’t let it pass by saying that we will trade it for economic benefits.”

‘Will never allow terrorism to be normalised’

Similarly, he added, India would “never, ever allow terrorism to be normalised”.

“The perpetrator of terrorism will try to do it as normalisation as one another thing to do,” he said.

Taking a swipe at the UPA government, he stated, “sometimes we did not have the strategic clarity”.

“We had occasions like Sharm El Sheikh and Havana, when we have allowed victim and perpetrator to come on the same page,” added Jaishankar.

This was a pointed dig at former National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, who had on Monday strongly criticised the NDA government’s policies isolating India.

Former NSA Shivshankar Menon. Photo: The Wire

In September 2006, the India-Pakistan joint statement announced that both sides will put in place an anti-terrorism institutional mechanism. The 2009 bilateral joint statement became a political hot potato in India as it mentioned that Pakistan had brought up “information on threats in Balochistan and other areas”.

Jaishankar disputed a question which said allowing Pakistani investigators access to the Pathankot air base in 2016 for probing a terror attack had a similar consequence. The minister, who had been foreign secretary at that time, claimed that the Pakistani government had accepted that Pakistani nationals had been behind the Pathankot incident. The Pakistanis were only allowed so that they were pressurised to act and did not have an excuse to delay any action, he stated.