India took centre stage at the Quad Leaders’ Summit attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 21, which was reflected in the official joint statement released by the member countries.
India’s presence strongly resonated in some of the major announcements to come out of the meeting: Quad Cancer Moonshot, a groundbreaking partnership to address the challenges posed by cancer and, in this particular instance, cervical cancer; and the first-ever Quad at Sea Ship Observer Mission in 2025 for the advancement of maritime safety and security in the Indo-Pacific region.
Modi put forward India’s views and commitments for global growth, development, peace and security not only at the Quad summit hosted by American President Joe Biden, but also during bilateral meetings with his counterparts.
The Quad summit – attended by the leaders of India, US, Australia and Japan — was hosted by US President Joe Biden in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
Here are some India-specific announcements to come out of the Quad Leaders’ Summit:
- On public healthcare: India has committed to providing HPV (human papillomavirus) sampling kits, detection kits, and cervical cancer vaccines worth $7.5 million (Rs 62.63 crore) to the Indo-Pacific region. India, through its $10 million (Rs 83.50 crore) commitment to the WHO’s Global Initiative on Digital Health, will offer technical assistance to interested countries in the region for the adoption and deployment of its digital public infrastructure that helps in cancer screening and care.
- Quad-at-sea mission: The US Coast Guard, Japan Coast Guard, Australian Border Force, and Indian Coast Guard, have planned to launch a first-ever Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission in 2025, to improve interoperability and advance maritime safety, and continuing with further missions in future years across the Indo-Pacific.
- On maritime security: A new regional Maritime Initiative for Training in the Indo-Pacific (MAITRI) has been announced. This is to enable partners in the region to maximise tools provided via Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) and other Quad partner initiatives, to monitor and secure their waters, enforce their laws, and deter unlawful behaviour. India will be hosting the inaugural MAITRI workshop in 2025.
- On clean and renewable energy: India has committed to invest $2 million (Rs 16.70 crore) in new solar projects in Fiji, Comoros, Madagascar and Seychelles.
- On higher education: India has also announced a new initiative to award 50 Quad scholarships, worth $500,000 (Rs 4.17 crore), to students from the Indo-Pacific to pursue a four-year undergraduate engineering programme at a technical institution funded by the central government.
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said Modi underlined India’s approach of cooperation, contact, and engagement for growth with a variety of partners in the Indo-Pacific during the Quad Leadership Summit.
“It was striking to hear the other Quad leaders acknowledge India’s actions and also at the same time hear their expectations of India, which really underlines the need to continue to work and sustain this enormous trust that India has earned from its partners,” he said during a special briefing in New York on Sunday (September 22).
He said the prime minister held three separate bilateral meetings with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and US President Joe Biden along with the Quad summit.
“All of these engagements have given the opportunity to prime minister to put forward India’s views and commitments for global growth, development, and peace and security,” he said.
He added: “In a sense, the overarching themes that have been reflected across the multiple meetings…the overall messages that have come through in all of his engagements have been India’s emphasis on minimising conflict and division, leveraging our democratic values even as we pursue our development objectives, and highlighting the role of technology and the digital revolution in ushering in good governance, essentially to turn the disruptive features of technology to good ends.”
(With PTI inputs)
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