Event reports
Adding further, he said that ‘Make in India’ will open new vistas for German companies globally while another area of cooperation was financial services wherein German pension funds could look at investments in India. He iterated that SMEs, the transport sector, particularly railways where India and Germany have signed a protocol and security issues were other areas for potential collaboration.
The Minister also formally released the book “Opportunity Beckons: Adding Momentum to the Indo-German Partnership” edited Mr. Gurjit Singh, till recently Ambassador of India to Germany. Mr. Gurjit Singh highlighted three areas where the Embassy of India in Germany had initiated projects to sustain the momentum generated by the visits of the heads of state of India and Germany. One was to bridge the gap in perception in India and Germany about the other that is beginning to bear fruit. The German government has launched a policy on strategic financing of infrastructure in Asia, which will help India, particularly the hi-speed rail project. It was also time to think of a Masala Bond in infrastructure in Frankfurt. He emphasized that nearly 80 German Mittelstand companies had signed up for the Make in India Mittelstand Programme and nearly half of them have their business plans ready for India.
Earlier, welcoming the dignitaries, Dr Naushad Forbes, President, CII, highlighted three areas of great potential which included attracting many more German Mittelstand companies to invest in India. The second related to connecting the German and India Family Owned Businesses to understand how the German Mittelstand family businesses have been able to scale up globally. The third pertained to combining Indian capabilities with Germany engineering and technical strengths.
A panel discussion held subsequently focused on areas like the importance of building trust, combining India’s frugal innovation strengths with German precision engineering to deploy solutions in India, learning from the German dual VET system of skill development, trying to bridge the cultural gaps and correcting misconceptions about India in Germany, the need to promote Brand India in Germany.
Mr. Pankaj Madan of the KAS, while thanking everybody for taking time out to be at the event, concluded that the book was a leap into the future of possibilities and probabilities which was bound to broaden and deepen the agenda of the Indo-German relations because, as Prof. Dr. Hans-Gert Pottering, the Chairman of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, aptly put forth- “The fact that both India and Germany are devoted to liberal democracy under a constitutional order, bolstered by judicial independence and a federal system of government, gives them the language and grammar to construct a Euro-Asian axis of democracy, peace and prosperity”.
