New Delhi:
India has a chance to rise again as a global economic power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said. The country can match with China and he has a "clear roadmap" to channelise the entrepreneurial capabilities of her 1.25 billion people, he has said.
In an interview with television channel CNN, the Prime Minister said, "This is a country that once upon a time was called 'the golden bird'. We have fallen from where we were before. But now we have a chance to rise again".
In the last five or ten centuries, India and China have grown at similar paces, said the Prime Minister, who recently hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping during his first visit to India . "Their contributions to global GDP have risen in parallel, and fallen in parallel. Today's era once again belongs to Asia. India and China are both growing rapidly, together," he said.
Mr Modi said he had a lot of faith in the entrepreneurial nature of India's 1.25 billion people and that he has "a clear road-map to channel it". (Read:
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Asked if he ever wished to have some of the authority the dictatorial regime in China had, he said democratic countries have also grown and if there were no democracy, then someone like him, born in a poor family, would not be occupying the country's highest office.
Asked if India is concerned over China's behavior in the East China Sea and the South China, which worried many of its neighbours, Mr Modi said, "We should have trust in China's understanding and have faith that it would accept global laws and play its role in cooperating and moving forward".
China's focus on its economic development is a sign that it does not want to be isolated, he said. "This is an era of partnership. Look at how it (China) has focused on economic development. It's hardly the sign of a country that wants to be isolated," he said.(Read:
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Ahead of his visit to the US, Mr Modi said it was possible for the US and India to develop a genuinely strategic alliance. "There are many similarities between the US and India," he said.
Though there have been ups and downs in the India-US relationship, "from the end of the 20th Century to the first decade of the 21st Century, we have witnessed a big change," he said. "Our ties have deepened. India and the USA are bound together, by history and culture. These ties will deepen further." (Read:
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Asked if he feels there is a genuine desire from Washington to try and upgrade the relationship substantially, the Prime Minister said relations between India and America should not be seen within the limits of just Delhi and Washington.
"It is a much larger sphere. The good thing is that the mood of both Delhi and Washington is in harmony with this understanding. Both sides have played a role in this," he said.