    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 24, 2000]
    [Pages 533-536]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Business Reception in Mumbai, India
    March 24, 2000

        Thank you. Thank you, President Goenka.
    Chief Minister Deshmukh; my good friend
    Ambassador Wisner; my colleague and longtime
    friend Ambassador Celeste; Secretary
    Daley; our distinguished crowd here. We
    thank you for welcoming us.
        I have brought quite a group from the United States, including six
    Members of our Congress. And we were just down in Hyderabad, and I asked
    the crowd to acknowledge them, because I always got to give the speech,
    they always have to listen, but when we go home, they control all the
    money. [Laughter] So I would like to acknowledge the presence here of
    Congressman Jim McDermott, Congressman Gary
    Ackerman, Congressman Ed Royce, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Representative Nita Lowey,
    and Representative Jan Schakowsky, all
    Members of the United States House of Representatives. We thank them for
    coming.
        This has been a remarkable week and, I think, a wonderful week for
    me and my daughter, Chelsea, who is here,
    and for our entire American delegation. We came as friends to a changing
    India, to gain a better understanding of your country, your views, in
    order to build a new partnership on a higher level than that which we
    have experienced over the last 22 years.
        If you imagine the world you would like to see 10 years from now or
    20 years from now, if you imagine how you would like India to be 10 or
    20 years from now, it is difficult to believe that the world you would
    like and the India you would like can be achieved without a deeper and
    better partnership of mutual respect and common endeavor with the United
    States.
        I can also say--grateful for the presence of the American
    Ambassador, one former American
    Ambassador to India, and the Indian
    Ambassador to the United States, Ambassador
    Chandra--that I cannot imagine the world that I want for my children's
    generation in America that does not include a deeper and better
    partnership with India.
        And so I came here to try to build it, or at least to have the
    foundations there before my time as President is done. Already, as all
    of you well know, America is the largest trading partner and investor
    for India. This week American companies signed about two dozen
    agreements to create or advance projects worth another $4 billion. And
    I'm very pleased that our Export-Import Bank will make available a
    billion dollars in new financing for small and medium-sized businesses
    in India to export to the United States.
        This week we have strengthened our commitment to work together to
    protect the environment, to promote clean energy, to fight against
    deadly diseases, to use science and technology to help people rise from
    poverty.

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        I visited a small village in Rajasthan yesterday; you probably saw
    the pictures in the paper where I was dancing with the village ladies.
    [Laughter] It was pretty good odds; there were about 30 of them and one
    of me. [Laughter] And they were throwing--the children were throwing
    flowers, petals of flowers on us. But the reason we were dancing was
    because of the time we had shared before. And I saw the work that was
    being done in the poor village to lift the lives of women, to give them
    access to credit, to give them support in the workplace, to keep their
    children, including their girl children, in school. I saw the role of
    men and women and people of different tribes and castes working together
    in the local government units. And so there was cause for celebration.
        Today in Hyderabad, when I was there, I talked to representatives of
    all 23 districts of the State in a teleconference about the same sorts
    of activities that are occurring. I say that because I believe that
    while there is plainly a digital divide in India and a digital divide in
    the United States, not just from place to place but within every city
    where there is a strong business group well-connected to the new
    economy, the truth is that the information age gives us the chance to
    eliminate poverty more quickly for more people than ever before in all
    of human history.
        I saw that yesterday when I was in this little village of Naila. And
    there was a computer hookup to the State and Federal Government so that
    all the people could come in and find out what all the services were
    that were available to them. And there were printouts so that the women
    could get actual prints that they could take home that would tell them
    how to take better care of their children.
        And someday every village will have all the educational software
    available anywhere in the world on it, so that in the poorest villages
    of India or Africa or China or Latin America, people will be able to
    print out for their schoolchildren the most modern educational materials
    available anywhere, so that people in the poorest villages of the world
    will have access to the same learning materials that the people in the
    richest schools in the United States or any other country have today.
        If we do this right, we will find that doing what is morally right,
    consistent with the values of India that's a sense of community and
    mutual responsibility, also turns out to be very good economics in the
    information age because you need more education, you need more people
    with the capacity to make the most of this new economy.
        The same thing is true with the environment. All over the world
    today there's a general consensus that the climate is warming too
    quickly and that the consequences are likely to be disastrous.
        I met with a man doing malaria research shortly before I came here
    tonight. And we talked about how troubling it was that malaria is now
    being found at higher and higher altitudes in countries all across the
    globe where it manifests, so that it's attacking people in villages that
    have never seen it before. And they're much more vulnerable and likely
    to have many more problems, all the consequences of changing
    environment.
        But in the information age, no nation has to grow rich by putting
    more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And in fact, there will be
    enormous opportunities for India--millions and millions of jobs, a
    trillion-dollar global market--in developing alternative energy sources,
    maximizing the use of new energy technologies, the development of fuel
    for automobiles from farm sources all over the world.
        It will change the world in the next 5 years about as much as the
    Internet has changed it in the last 5, and it will do nothing but help
    India. It would reduce the pressures on your people to continue
    practices that lead to soil erosion or the loss of precious species.
        Yesterday I went to the Ranthambhore National Park and I saw two
    magnificent Bengal tigers, one, a vast male tiger named Boomerang--
    interesting name for a tiger--[laughter]--and the other a female tiger.
    Rather like often happens, the female was doing all the work in this
    setting. [Laughter] She was stalking a herd of deer. And it was an
    amazing sight to behold.
        Already this year, 20 tigers have been killed in India, even though
    it is not legal to do so. All of these competing economic pressures. I
    hope all of you will help to preserve your tiger population. It's an
    important part of India's heritage. But I think we all understand that
    the stronger and more diversified the economy gets, the easier it will
    be to preserve the species, to preserve the environment, to restore the
    magnificent historical and cultural artifacts that dot

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    the countryside in every part of this magnificent country.
        So we have a lot at stake in this. So does the United States. We
    have in Silicon Valley alone 750 companies started by Indian-Americans--
    750 in Silicon Valley alone. We have seen the country literally
    transformed because of the infusion of new talent from people from all
    over the world. But we have been especially blessed by people from India
    and, indeed, from throughout South Asia.
        And as I look at the world of tomorrow, a world that I hope will be
    characterized by peace and prosperity, by a genuine commitment to the
    dignity of all people, by societies which celebrate their ethnic, their
    racial, their tribal, their religious diversity, but are bound together
    by a common acceptance that the humanity we all share is even more
    important than the differences among us--I know the world will never be
    that way unless South Asia is that way.
        And I have seen in these local experiments in India something I wish
    for all the world. Yesterday, in that little village where I am known
    now only for dancing not very well with the village women, I talked to
    people on the local government council who told me that they now had 10
    of their tribes and castes represented in their local government, that
    for the first time in the history of the village, people from different
    groups were regularly dining together.
        Now, it seems like a little thing, but if you consider the fact that
    800,000 people, more or less, were killed in the Rwandan tribal wars in
    the space of 100 days, that a million people were driven from their
    homes in Kosovo simply because they were Muslim in a country that was
    mostly Serbian and Orthodox Christian, that the Irish Troubles have been
    going on for 30 years, and in the Middle East people still die because
    of their faith and ethnic background, and I could go on and on and on--
    it was a truly remarkable thing to see that in a local community in
    India, people were worried about how they could get clean water, and it
    didn't matter much what your caste or tribe was. And they were rather
    proud of the fact that women as well as men were in the government and
    that their positions were, to some extent, guaranteed. And they couldn't
    even remember why they didn't want to have dinner together anymore.
        This may seem small to you, but if you have seen people like I have
    seen them--a widow in Rwanda who woke up to see her husband and six
    children cut to death all around her, just because of the tribe they
    were in; if you had been in the refugee camps that I've been in, in the
    Balkans, in Bosnia and Kosovo, to see people run out just because of
    their religious faith--it is not something to be lightly discarded. If
    you can figure out how to take what I saw yesterday at the village level
    and keep working until you reach some sort of acceptable accommodation
    on the other larger problems on this subcontinent, there's no stopping
    you.
        I really do believe that if India--and of course, as I said in my
    speech to the Parliament, you'll have to make all these decisions
    yourself. And we don't agree on every issue, and we shouldn't. And
    friends don't have to agree on every issue. They just have to have an
    honest relationship about it, and then whoever is supposed to make the
    decision has to make the decision. But I do believe if we can lead the
    region--or you can--away from the proliferation of dangerous weapons,
    toward the proliferation of new ideas, new companies, and new
    technologies; away from the kind of racial and ethnic tensions that we
    see now in the trouble spots in South Asia, toward the sort of harmony I
    saw in that little village yesterday, then the dreams that your Chief
    Minister spoke of are well within your grasp.
        I believe that if we work together to turn our common vision into
    common progress, to educate our children as partners, to fight disease
    as partners, to protect our environment as partners, to expand commerce
    as partners, to lift the lives of the poorest among us as partners, to
    fight terrorism and work for tolerance as partners, I believe if we do
    that, then what Gandhi said of India so long ago will certainly be true.
    He once said, ``It is my conviction that India, numbering one-fifth of
    the human race, can be a great force of service to the whole of
    mankind.''
        If we have the right kind of partnership and the best of India that
    I have seen in these last few days becomes the guiding force for all of
    India, then Gandhi's cherished hope will become the accepted reality for
    your children and America's children in this new century.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

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    Note: The President spoke at 7:45 p.m. at the Stock Exchange. In his
    remarks, he referred to G.P. Goenka, president, Federation of Indian
    Chambers of Commerce and Industry; Vilasrao Deshmukh, Chief Minister of
    Maharashtra; Frank G. Wisner, director and vice chairman, external
    affairs, American International Group, Inc.; Richard F. Celeste, U.S.
    Ambassador to India; and Naresh Chandra, Indian Ambassador to the United
    States.