NEW DELHI, 8 December 2006 — Indicating that India has no intention to bend to the whims of the West, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday that the West needed to accept the rise of new nations in the East.

“We need global institutions and global rules of game that can facilitate the peaceful rise of new nations. It also means global institutions and frameworks of cooperation must evolve and change to accommodate the new reality,” Manmohan said.

“This is as true for the reform and revitalization of the United Nations and the restructuring of the UN Security Council, as it is true for the management of multilateral trading regime, for the protection of global environment and the security of energy supplies,” he said. He was speaking at the London School of Economics Asia Forum.

“Just as the world accommodated the rejuvenation of Europe in the post-War period, it must accommodate the rise of new Asian economies in the years ahead,” Manmohan said.

India and China will regain a considerable part of their share of the world GDP that they had lost during two centuries of European colonialism, Manmohan asserted. While China has trebled its share of world GDP over the past 20 years, India has doubled it, he said.

Observing that rise of newly industrializing economies of East and South East Asia would also present new challenges, Manmohan said: “The rise of Asia and of developing countries in general presents us with new challenges — new intellectual challenges, new technological challenges, new organizational and political challenges.” Manmohan said while there were ample studies on the benefits of free movement of goods and investment, the same was not true for professionals where India has an edge.

‘There are many questions pertaining to the globalization of lifestyles and its consequences for consumption, and their impact on the world environment,” the prime minister said. “If every consumer in India and in China, totaling up to almost three billion, want to live like people in San Francisco, Stockholm or Singapore, can they afford to? Can nature afford it?” he queried.

According to him, the rise of Asia, including India and China, will be the most important development of this century and alter the balance of world income to present both opportunities and challenges.

“This need not worry the West, since a dynamic Asia can power global growth and provide new opportunities for growth for Europe as well as for North America,” the prime minister said. “There are I believe no textbook solutions. There are no pet answers, no clever models. The rise of Asia, and of the developing world in general, presents us with new challenges,” he said.

According to Manmohan, while general perception is that globalization is a reality that comes with both opportunities and challenges which nations must contend with, it also threw many unsettled questions.

“For example, while there is enormous, and quite longstanding literature on the benefits of free trade in goods and free flow of capital, the literature and policy on the free movement of people remains scanty and patchy,” he said.