[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 12 (Monday, March 27, 2000)]
[Pages 625-628]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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, I'm 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.

[[Page 626]]

    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 Nayla. And 
there was a computer hook-up 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 some day 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 school children 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 these competing economic pressures. I hope 
all of you will help to preserve your tiger population. It's an 
important part

[[Page 627]]

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 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-

[[Page 628]]

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.

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.