Why nations should pursue "soft" power | Shashi Tharoor

Summary

The speaker, an Indian politician and author, discusses India's rise as a global power, questioning the concept of 'world leadership' and suggesting that India's true strength lies in its 'soft power'. This includes its cultural influence, exemplified by Bollywood, cuisine, and the widespread adoption of Indian practices like yoga and ayurveda. He emphasizes India's unique narrative of political pluralism and democratic resilience, highlighting the nation's ability to embrace diversity and maintain consensus despite internal differences. The speaker argues that India's story is one of an open society and a pluralistic civilization, which is both ancient and contemporary, and one that India should continue to share with the world.

Takeaways

• 🌐 India's rise to potential superpower status is a topic of global interest, but the speaker feels that the concept of 'world leadership' is outdated.
• 📈 India is on track to become the world's most populous country by 2034, has the fourth-largest army, and possesses nuclear capacity.
• 💼 India boasts the fifth-largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity and demonstrated robust economic growth even during global downturns.
• 📱 The speaker emphasizes 'soft power' as a significant contributor to global influence, which India is successfully leveraging through culture, values, and policies.
• 🌟 India's connectivity has exploded, with over 500 million cellphones in use, surpassing the U.S. in the telecommunications market.
• 🎭 Bollywood and Indian entertainment are spreading Indian culture globally, with movies resonating even with non-English speaking audiences.
• 🍲 Indian cuisine's global reach has expanded significantly, with Indian restaurants becoming a common sight in many Western cities.
• 🏛️ India's political pluralism and democratic processes are highlighted as a strong foundation for its global narrative, contrasting with more homogenous national identities.
• 🌍 The speaker argues that in the information age, the country that tells the better story, not the one with the bigger army, tends to prevail.
• 🏆 India's success is rooted in its ability to maintain consensus on survival without consensus, a principle that has helped it endure despite vast diversity.

Q & A

What is the speaker's concern about India being labeled as the next superpower?

The speaker is concerned that the hype about India becoming a world leader or superpower is based on an outdated notion of world leadership, which they find archaic and reminiscent of James Bond movies and Kipling ballads.

What does the speaker believe India's true potential contribution to the world should be?

The speaker suggests that India's true potential lies in its 'soft power', which includes the power of example, the attraction of its culture, and its ability to influence others through its cultural, political, and foreign policy values.

How does the speaker describe the concept of 'soft power'?

Soft power, as defined by Joseph Nye and described by the speaker, is a country's ability to attract others due to its culture, political values, and foreign policies.

What are some examples of 'soft power' mentioned in the script?

Examples of 'soft power' mentioned include the Alliance Francaise, the British Council, the Beijing Olympics, Voice of America, Fulbright scholarships, Hollywood, MTV, and McDonald's.

How does the speaker illustrate India's rapid growth in telecommunications?

The speaker illustrates India's growth by stating that India sells 15 million cellphones a month, has over 509 million cellphones in use, and has become larger than the U.S. as a telephone market.

What impact does the speaker say the proliferation of cellphones has had on India's underclass?

The speaker says that the spread of cellphones has empowered the underclass in India, allowing them to connect, access information, and improve their livelihoods, such as fishermen finding the best market prices and farmers saving labor by making quick calls instead of spending a day traveling to market towns.

How does the speaker view Bollywood's role in India's soft power?

The speaker views Bollywood as a significant part of India's soft power, taking Indian culture and stories to a global audience, including non-Indian diaspora and regions like the Middle East and Africa.

What is the significance of the speaker's anecdote about the Indian television soap opera in Afghanistan?

The anecdote about the soap opera 'Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi' being dubbed into Dari and becoming the most popular show in Afghan history illustrates the power of Indian entertainment to captivate audiences and influence perceptions of India, even in regions with serious security issues.

What is the speaker's view on the importance of storytelling in the information era?

The speaker believes that in today's world, it's not the side with the bigger army that wins, but the country that tells a better story. India, with its rich culture and history, is well-positioned to tell such stories.

How does the speaker describe India's political pluralism?

The speaker describes India's political pluralism as a civilizational story of an open society that has welcomed diverse religions and cultures for millennia, and is sustained by a pluralist democracy that allows for differences while maintaining consensus on the ground rules of disagreement.

What challenges does the speaker acknowledge India still needs to overcome?

The speaker acknowledges that India still needs to overcome poverty, improve infrastructure such as ports, roads, and airports, and enhance human capital by ensuring basic needs are met and providing education and job opportunities.

Outlines

00:00

🌏 India's Soft Power and Global Perception

The speaker begins by expressing concern over the hype surrounding India's potential as a world leader and superpower. They question the concept of world leadership as outdated and explore India's attributes such as population, military strength, nuclear capacity, and economic growth. However, they argue that these do not define India's true potential contribution to the world. Instead, they propose that India's soft power, including its culture, political values, and foreign policies, could be a more significant influence. The speaker introduces the concept of soft power, as defined by Joseph Nye, and gives examples of how countries like the U.S., France, and China have utilized it. They emphasize India's rapid growth in telecommunications and its potential to connect and influence through various channels of communication.

05:02

📱 The Transformational Impact of Connectivity

The speaker discusses the remarkable transformation in India's communication landscape, highlighting the rapid increase in mobile phone usage. They provide examples of how ordinary people, such as street vendors and farmers, are leveraging mobile technology to improve their livelihoods. The speaker also touches on the global spread of Indian culture through Bollywood and other cultural exports, illustrating how these elements contribute to India's soft power. They share anecdotes about the popularity of Indian TV shows and movies in various parts of the world, emphasizing the power of storytelling in shaping perceptions and influence.

10:05

🎭 The Power of Storytelling and Cultural Exports

In this paragraph, the speaker continues to elaborate on the influence of India's cultural exports, such as Bollywood, music, dance, and cuisine, on the global stage. They mention the economic impact of Indian restaurants in Britain and the changing stereotypes of India from a land of mystics to a hub of technological prowess. The speaker emphasizes the importance of storytelling in the information era and how India's pluralistic democracy and open society form the foundation of its compelling narrative.

15:08

🗽 The Idea of India: Unity in Diversity

The speaker concludes by discussing the essence of India's identity, which is not based on ethnicity, language, or religion, but on the idea of a pluralistic democracy. They reflect on India's history of welcoming diverse cultures and religions and its recent achievements in maintaining consensus through democratic processes. The speaker highlights India's success in managing diversity and maintaining unity despite its vast differences, positioning India as a model for the 21st century. They also acknowledge the challenges India faces, such as poverty and infrastructure development, but emphasize the country's determination to overcome these issues while upholding its democratic values.

Keywords

💡World Leadership

World leadership in the context of the video refers to the concept of a nation being at the forefront of global affairs, influencing international politics, and possibly being a superpower. The speaker expresses concern over India being labeled as such, as they believe the notion is outdated and more akin to old James Bond movies or Kipling's works. The speaker prefers to focus on India's potential contributions to the world in a more nuanced manner.

💡Soft Power

Soft power is a term coined by Joseph Nye and refers to the ability of a country to shape the preferences of others through appeal and attraction rather than coercion or payments. In the video, the speaker suggests that India's soft power could be a significant contributor to its global influence, through its culture, political values, and foreign policies, rather than traditional measures of strength like military or economic might.

💡Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)

Purchasing Power Parity is an economic concept that compares different countries' currencies through a 'basket of goods' approach to find out how far one currency is needed to buy the same quantity of goods in different countries. The speaker mentions that India has the fifth-largest economy in the world by PPP, highlighting its growing economic strength without directly equating it to global leadership.

💡Global Public

The global public refers to the collective audience of world citizens who are informed and influenced by media and communication channels. The speaker mentions that countries are increasingly being judged by this global public, which consumes a constant stream of information from various communication devices, shaping their perception of different nations.

💡Information Era

The information era is a term used to describe the current age where the creation, distribution, use, and understanding of information have played a crucial role in societal development and organization. The speaker uses this term to emphasize how the perception of countries like India is being shaped by the information available to the global public through various media.

💡Telecommunications

Telecommunications refers to the transmission of information over long distances, typically via electronic means. The speaker discusses the rapid growth of telecommunications in India, with the sale of 15 million cellphones a month, as an example of India's increasing connectivity and its impact on empowering the underclass.

💡Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal name for India's Hindi language film industry based in Mumbai. The speaker uses Bollywood as an example of India's soft power, spreading Indian culture globally through movies that are enjoyed by audiences beyond the Indian diaspora, including Arabs and Africans.

💡Yoga and Ayurveda

Yoga and Ayurveda are traditional Indian practices that have gained international popularity. Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual practice, while Ayurveda is a system of medicine with historical roots in the Indian subcontinent. The speaker mentions these as examples of India's cultural exports that contribute to its soft power.

💡Political Pluralism

Political pluralism is the idea that multiple political parties and ideologies should exist within a society. The speaker discusses India's political pluralism as a fundamental platform of its civilizational story, highlighting its history as an open society and its recent democratic elections as evidence of its commitment to diversity and pluralism.

💡Nationalism of an Idea

Nationalism of an idea refers to the concept where national identity is based on shared beliefs and principles rather than ethnicity, language, or religion. The speaker describes India as embodying this form of nationalism, united by the idea of a pluralist democracy and a shared history, rather than a single ethnic or religious identity.

💡Development

Development in the context of the video refers to the process of economic and social growth and the improvement of a country's quality of life. The speaker acknowledges India's challenges in terms of development, such as poverty and infrastructure, but also points out the progress being made within its pluralistic society.

Highlights

Concern about the hype around India becoming a world leader and the next superpower.

Critique of the concept of world leadership as outdated and reminiscent of James Bond and Kipling.

India's population is on track to become the largest in the world by 2034.

India possesses the fourth largest army in the world.

India's nuclear capacity is recognized by the United States.

India has the fifth-largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power parity.

India's economic growth of 6.7 percent despite global downturns.

The concept of 'soft power' introduced by Joseph Nye, emphasizing cultural and political influence.

Examples of soft power include Alliance Francaise, British Council, and the Beijing Olympics.

Hollywood, MTV, and McDonald's as significant contributors to American soft power.

The importance of multiple channels of communication in the information era.

India's extensive all-news TV channels compared to the rest of the world.

India's remarkable growth in cellphone usage, selling 15 million phones a month.

The transformation of India from a country with scarce telephones to a major telecommunications market.

The empowerment of the underclass through connectivity and the use of cellphones in everyday life.

Bollywood's global reach and influence as a form of Indian soft power.

The popularity of Indian television shows in Afghanistan,暂停 influencing daily life.

The changing global perception of India from mystical to technologically advanced.

The political pluralism and democratic values that form the foundation of India's soft power.

India's success as a plural democracy despite predictions of disintegration.

The importance of India's story of unity in diversity and the consensus on survival.

India's challenges in poverty and development within an open and diverse society.

The significance of India's participation in TED and TED's relevance in India.

Transcripts

As an Indian, and now as a politician

and a government minister,

I've become rather concerned about

the hype we're hearing about our own country,

all this talk about India becoming a world leader,

even the next superpower.

In fact, the American publishers of my book,

"The Elephant, The Tiger and the Cell Phone,"

added a gratuitous subtitle saying,

"India: The next 21st-century power."

And I just don't think that's what India's all about,

or should be all about.

Indeed, what worries me is the entire notion of world leadership

seems to me terribly archaic.

It's redolent of James Bond movies

and Kipling ballads.

After all, what constitutes a world leader?

If it's population, we're on course to top the charts.

We will overtake China by 2034.

Is it military strength? Well, we have the world's fourth largest army.

Is it nuclear capacity? We know we have that.

The Americans have even recognized it,

in an agreement.

Is it the economy? Well, we have now

the fifth-largest economy in the world

in purchasing power parity terms.

And we continue to grow. When the rest of the world took a beating last year,

we grew at 6.7 percent.

But, somehow, none of that adds up to me,

to what I think India really can aim to contribute in the world,

in this part of the 21st century.

And so I wondered, could

what the future beckons for India to be all about

be a combination of these things allied to something else,

the power of example,

the attraction of India's culture,

what, in other words, people like to call "soft power."

Soft power is a concept invented by a Harvard academic,

Joseph Nye, a friend of mine.

And, very simply, and I'm really cutting it short because of the time limits here,

it's essentially the ability of a country to attract others

because of its culture, its political values,

its foreign policies.

And, you know, lots of countries do this. He was writing initially about the States,

but we know the Alliance Francaise

is all about French soft power, the British Council.

The Beijing Olympics were an exercise in Chinese soft power.

Americans have the Voice of America and the Fulbright scholarships.

But, the fact is, in fact,

that probably Hollywood and MTV and McDonalds

have done more for American soft power

around the world than any specifically government activity.

So soft power is something that really emerges

partly because of governments,

but partly despite governments.

And in the information era we all live in today,

what we might call the TED age,

I'd say that countries are increasingly being judged

by a global public that's been fed

on an incessant diet of Internet news,

of televised images,

of cellphone videos, of email gossip.

In other words, all sorts of communication devices

are telling us the stories of countries,

whether or not the countries concerned want people to hear those stories.

Now, in this age, again, countries with access

to multiple channels of communication

and information have a particular advantage.

And of course they have more influence, sometimes, about how they're seen.

India has more all-news TV channels

than any country in the world,

in fact in most of the countries in this part of the world put together.

But, the fact still is that it's not just that.

In order to have soft power, you have to be connected.

One might argue that India has become

an astonishingly connected country.

I think you've already heard the figures.

We've been selling 15 million cellphones a month.

Currently there are 509 million cellphones

in Indian hands, in India.

And that makes us larger than the U.S. as a telephone market.

In fact, those 15 million cellphones

are the most connections that any country,

including the U.S. and China,

has ever established in the history of telecommunications.

But, what perhaps some of you don't realize

is how far we've come to get there.

You know, when I grew up in India,

telephones were a rarity.

In fact, they were so rare that elected members of Parliament

had the right to allocate 15 telephone lines

as a favor to those they deemed worthy.

If you were lucky enough to be a wealthy businessman

or an influential journalist, or a doctor or something, you might have a telephone.

But sometimes it just sat there.

I went to high school in Calcutta.

And we would look at this instrument sitting in the front foyer.

But half the time we would pick it up

with an expectant look on our faces,

there would be no dial tone.

If there was a dial tone and you dialed a number,

the odds were two in three you wouldn't get the number you were intending to reach.

In fact the words "wrong number" were more popular than the word "Hello."

(Laughter)

If you then wanted to connect to another city,

let's say from Calcutta you wanted to call Delhi,

you'd have to book something called a trunk call,

and then sit by the phone all day, waiting for it to come through.

Or you could pay eight times the going rate

for something called a lightning call.

But, lightning struck rather slowly in our country in those days,

so, it was like about a half an hour for a lightning call to come through.

In fact, so woeful was our telephone service

that a Member of Parliament stood up in 1984 and complained about this.

And the Then-Communications Minister replied in a lordly manner

that in a developing country

communications are a luxury, not a right,

that the government had no obligation to provide better service,

and if the honorable Member wasn't satisfied with his telephone,

could he please return it, since there was an eight-year-long waiting list

for telephones in India.

Now, fast-forward to today and this is what you see:

the 15 million cell phones a month.

But what is most striking is who is carrying those cell phones.

You know, if you visit friends in the suburbs of Delhi,

on the side streets you will find a fellow with a cart

that looks like it was designed in the 16th century,

wielding a coal-fired steam iron

that might have been invented in the 18th century.

He's called an isthri wala. But he's carrying a 21st-century instrument.

He's carrying a cell phone because most incoming calls are free,

and that's how he gets orders from the neighborhood,

to know where to collect clothes to get them ironed.

The other day I was in Kerala, my home state,

at the country farm of a friend,

about 20 kilometers away from any place you'd consider urban.

And it was a hot day and he said, "Hey, would you like some fresh coconut water?"

And it's the best thing and the most nutritious and refreshing thing you can drink

on a hot day in the tropics, so I said sure.

And he whipped out his cellphone, dialed the number,

and a voice said, "I'm up here."

And right on top of the nearest coconut tree,

with a hatchet in one hand and a cell phone in the other,

was a local toddy tapper,

who proceeded to bring down the coconuts for us to drink.

Fishermen are going out to sea and carrying their cell phones.

When they catch the fish they call all the market towns along the coast

to find out where they get the best possible prices.

Farmers now, who used to have to spend half a day of backbreaking labor

to find out if the market town was open,

if the market was on,

whether the product they'd harvested could be sold, what price they'd fetch.

They'd often send an eight year old boy all the way on this trudge

to the market town to get that information and come back,

then they'd load the cart.

Today they're saving half a day's labor with a two minute phone call.

So this empowerment of the underclass

is the real result of India being connected.

And that transformation is part of where India is heading today.

But, of course that's not the only thing about India that's spreading.

You've got Bollywood. My attitude to Bollywood is best summarized

in the tale of the two goats at a Bollywood garbage dump --

Mr. Shekhar Kapur, forgive me --

and they're chewing away on cans of celluloid discarded by a Bollywood studio.

And the first goat, chewing away, says, "You know, this film is not bad."

And the second goat says, "No, the book was better."

(Laughter)

I usually tend to think that the book is usually better,

but, having said that,

the fact is that Bollywood is now

taking a certain aspect of Indian-ness and Indian culture around the globe,

not just in the Indian diaspora in the U.S. and the U.K.,

but to the screens of Arabs and Africans, of Senegalese and Syrians.

I've met a young man in New York whose illiterate mother

in a village in Senegal

takes a bus once a month to the capital city of Dakar,

just to watch a Bollywood movie.

She can't understand the dialogue.

She's illiterate, so she can't read the French subtitles.

But these movies are made to be understood despite such handicaps,

and she has a great time in the song and the dance and the action.

She goes away with stars in her eyes about India, as a result.

And this is happening more and more.

Afghanistan, we know what a serious security problem

Afghanistan is for so many of us in the world.

India doesn't have a military mission there.

You know what was India's biggest asset in Afghanistan in the last seven years?

One simple fact:

you couldn't try to call an Afghan at 8:30 in the evening.

Why? Because that was the moment

when the Indian television soap opera,

"Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi," dubbed into Dari, was telecast on Tolo T.V.

And it was the most popular television show in Afghan history.

Every Afghan family wanted to watch it.

They had to suspend functions at 8:30.

Weddings were reported to be interrupted

so guests could cluster around the T.V. set,

and then turn their attention back to the bride and groom.

Crime went up at 8:30. I have read a Reuters dispatch --

so this is not Indian propaganda, a British news agency --

about how robbers in the town of Musarri Sharif*

stripped a vehicle of its windshield wipers,

its hubcaps, its sideview mirrors,

any moving part they could find, at 8:30,

because the watchmen were busy watching the T.V. rather than minding the store.

And they scrawled on the windshield in a reference to the show's heroine,

"Tulsi Zindabad": "Long live Tulsi."

(Laughter)

That's soft power. And that is what India is developing

through the "E" part of TED:

its own entertainment industry.

The same is true, of course -- we don't have time for too many more examples --

but it's true of our music, of our dance,

of our art, yoga, ayurveda, even Indian cuisine.

I mean, the proliferation of Indian restaurants

since I first went abroad as a student, in the mid '70s,

and what I see today, you can't go to a mid-size town in Europe or North America

and not find an Indian restaurant. It may not be a very good one.

But, today in Britain, for example,

Indian restaurants in Britain

employ more people than the coal mining,

ship building and iron and steel industries combined.

So the empire can strike back.

(Applause)

But, with this increasing awareness of India,

with yoga and ayurveda, and so on,

with tales like Afghanistan,

comes something vital in the information era,

the sense that in today's world

it's not the side of the bigger army that wins,

it's the country that tells a better story that prevails.

And India is, and must remain, in my view, the land of the better story.

Stereotypes are changing. I mean, again, having gone to the U.S.

as a student in the mid '70s,

I knew what the image of India was then, if there was an image at all.

Today, people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere

speak of the IITs, the Indian Institutes of Technology

with the same reverence they used to accord to MIT.

This can sometimes have unintended consequences. OK.

I had a friend, a history major like me,

who was accosted at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam,

by an anxiously perspiring European saying,

"You're Indian, you're Indian! Can you help me fix my laptop?"

(Laughter)

We've gone from the image of India as

land of fakirs lying on beds of nails,

and snake charmers with the Indian rope trick,

to the image of India as a land of mathematical geniuses,

computer wizards, software gurus.

But that too is transforming the Indian story around the world.

But, there is something more substantive to that.

The story rests on a fundamental platform

of political pluralism.

It's a civilizational story to begin with.

Because India has been an open society for millennia.

India gave refuge to the Jews, fleeing the destruction of the first temple

by the Babylonians, and said thereafter by the Romans.

In fact, legend has is that when Doubting Thomas, the Apostle, Saint Thomas,

landed on the shores of Kerala, my home state,

somewhere around 52 A.D.,

he was welcomed on shore by a flute-playing Jewish girl.

And to this day remains the only Jewish diaspora

in the history of the Jewish people, which has never encountered

a single incident of anti-semitism.

(Applause)

That's the Indian story.

Islam came peacefully to the south,

slightly more differently complicated history in the north.

But all of these religions have found a place and a welcome home in India.

You know, we just celebrated, this year, our general elections,

the biggest exercise in democratic franchise in human history.

And the next one will be even bigger, because our voting population

keeps growing by 20 million a year.

But, the fact is

that the last elections, five years ago,

gave the world extraordinary phenomenon

of an election being won by a woman political leader

of Italian origin and Roman Catholic faith, Sonia Gandhi,

who then made way for a Sikh, Mohan Singh,

to be sworn in as Prime Minister

by a Muslim, President Abdul Kalam,

in a country 81 percent Hindu.

(Applause)

This is India, and of course it's all the more striking

because it was four years later that we all applauded

the U.S., the oldest democracy in the modern world,

more than 220 years of free and fair elections,

which took till last year to elect a president or a vice president

who wasn't white, male or Christian.

So, maybe -- oh sorry, he is Christian, I beg your pardon --

and he is male, but he isn't white.

All the others have been all those three.

(Laughter)

All his predecessors have been all those three,

and that's the point I was trying to make.

(Laughter)

But, the issue is

that when I talked about that example,

it's not just about talking about India, it's not propaganda.

Because ultimately, that electoral outcome

had nothing to do with the rest of the world.

It was essentially India being itself.

And ultimately, it seems to me,

that always works better than propaganda.

Governments aren't very good at telling stories.

But people see a society for what it is,

and that, it seems to me, is what ultimately

will make a difference in today's information era,

in today's TED age.

So India now is no longer

the nationalism of ethnicity or language or religion,

because we have every ethnicity known to mankind, practically,

we've every religion know to mankind,

with the possible exception of Shintoism,

though that has some Hindu elements somewhere.

We have 23 official languages that are recognized in our Constitution.

And those of you who cashed your money here

might be surprised to see how many scripts there are

on the rupee note, spelling out the denominations.

We've got all of that.

We don't even have geography uniting us,

because the natural geography of the subcontinent

framed by the mountains and the sea was hacked

by the partition with Pakistan in 1947.

In fact, you can't even take the name of the country for granted,

because the name "India" comes from the river Indus,

which flows in Pakistan.

But, the whole point is that India

is the nationalism of an idea.

It's the idea of an ever-ever-land,

emerging from an ancient civilization,

united by a shared history,

but sustained, above all, by pluralist democracy.

That is a 21st-century story as well as an ancient one.

And it's the nationalism of an idea that

essentially says you can endure differences of caste, creed,

color, culture, cuisine, custom and costume, consonant, for that matter,

and still rally around a consensus.

And the consensus is of a very simple principle,

that in a diverse plural democracy like India

you don't really have to agree on everything all the time,

so long as you agree on the ground rules

of how you will disagree.

The great success story of India,

a country that so many learned scholars and journalists

assumed would disintegrate, in the '50s and '60s,

is that it managed to maintain consensus on how to survive without consensus.

Now, that is the India that is emerging into the 21st century.

And I do want to make the point

that if there is anything worth celebrating about India,

it isn't military muscle, economic power.

All of that is necessary,

but we still have huge amounts of problems to overcome.

Somebody said we are super poor, and we are also super power.

We can't really be both of those.

We have to overcome our poverty. We have to deal with the

hardware of development,

the ports, the roads, the airports,

all the infrastructural things we need to do,

and the software of development,

the human capital, the need for the ordinary person in India

to be able to have a couple of square meals a day,

to be able to send his or her children

to a decent school,

and to aspire to work a job

that will give them opportunities in their lives

that can transform themselves.

But, it's all taking place, this great adventure of conquering those challenges,

those real challenges which none of us can pretend don't exist.

But, it's all taking place in an open society,

in a rich and diverse and plural civilization,

in one that is determined to liberate and fulfill

the creative energies of its people.

That's why India belongs at TED,

and that's why TED belongs in India.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)