Indian President Pranab Mukherjee: "I can change my friends if I... - global conversation

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• published: 03 Oct 2013
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Pranab Mukherjee has been president of India for just over 12 months. Though his role as head of... euronews, the most watched news channel in Europe Subscribe for your daily dose of international news, curated and explained:http://eurone.ws/10ZCK4a Euronews is available in 13 other languages: http://eurone.ws/17moBCU http://www.euronews.com/2013/10/03/indian-president-pranab-mukherjee-i-can-change-my-friends-if-i-like-but-i-can-t Pranab Mukherjee has been president of India for just over 12 months. Though his role as head of state is largely ceremonial Mr Mukherjee is a veteran politician having held several portfolios in government. The former Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi was his mentor in a political career which began with his election to parliament in 1969. Euronews went to the Presidential Palace in New Delhi to meet Mr.Mukherjee on the eve of his trip to Brussels where he will attend Europalia, a four month event being staged to raise the cultural profile of India in Europe. Chiara Reid euronews: "Mr President, thank you very much for welcoming us into your house and for participating to this edition of The Global Conversation, a conversation which we hope will shed some light onto the vital issues at the heart of India today. 'You are coming to Europe at a time when both India and the EU are grappling with great economic difficulties. We heard all about the euro crisis, but India's economic problems took us by surprise. You were supposed to be the future, the smart, industrial powerhouse, one of the so called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China). So, what happened?" Pranab Kumar Mukherjee : "First of all I would like to express my views on this issue, I am fully aware of it, because I myself was involved, when the crisis begun. First financial crisis in 2008, I had to bear the additional responsibility of heading the finance ministry, therefore I had to face this problem. Indian GDP was growing at a fast rate of around nine percent plus, but when I took over I found out there was, on almost a fortnightly basis a sliding down of the GDP. In hindsight we can say that we did not understand the depth of the crisis at that point of time. So immediately we had to rush and like most other countries we provided stimulus packages. 'Frankly speaking we could not recover from that shock, I am not talking of India but also the whole world, because the problem is at the root, and at that root there is a commonality of the problems for the eurozone and ourselves, as most of the emerging countries and some of the developed countries also, that our borrowing is not matching our mobilisation of resources. It required radical reforms. Many of the European countries did it, even taking the risk, I salute them!" euronews: "Do you think that India will do that too?" Pranab Kumar Mukherjee: "India has already started doing it." euronews: "But there is more need for reforms." Pranab Kumar Mukherjee "There is. Because - I am coming to that point - we should also keep in mind the size of the Indian population, the level of uneven development. Most of the advanced countries, their manufacturing sector is highly developed. But in India we cannot afford to have that model. Because I am to feed 1.2 billion plus people. Therefore I shall have to concentrate on agriculture. I shall have to concentrate on the development of rural India but I do agree that in today's context when the world is becoming economically integrated and global economy is no longer a dream but a reality we shall have to work collectively, but keeping in view the country's specific requirements." euronews : "And talking about cooperation, EU and India are strategic partners, and there is a free trade and investment agreement on the table since 2007. If completed, it would positively impact on the lives of over 1.8 billion people. How can we kick start this crucial pact?" Pranab Kumar Mukherjee : "Of course, now I cannot respond or directly act on it but my advice to my colleagues in the ministry is that 15 rounds of negotiations have been completed, I will also closely monitor it. When I was in the ministry of Finance, large number of areas of agreement were reached. There are only very few areas of differences. We should narrow down these differences." euronews: "Are these areas you still have to tackle for example the amount of red tape there is in India?" Pranab Kumar Mukherjee : "What I feel, that here are a certain areas where there are conceptual differences. But I am not going into the nitty gritty, what I want to emphasise that we must work to reach the agreement sooner rather than later." Find us on: Youtube http://bit.ly/zr3upY Facebook http://www.facebook.com/euronews.fans Twitter http://twitter.com/euronews