Quad Economics: India & Australia perspectives in COVID Era
The Diaspora series is a multifaceted virtual series with a podcast, committed to advancing India & Australia’s self reliance campaign, the concept of “Vocal for Local”, addressing the diaspora opportunities, advancing Australia’s opportunities with India through dialogues for now & future.
Following the inaugural topic in December 2020|| New India’s Farm Bill – treading the stage to be the global food- export powerhouse, there is no critical issue facing the world today than the future in extended COVID pandemic.
The force for global good, united by democratic values, engaged, together, in efforts to achieve overcoming the pandemic, laying the foundations for an inclusive recovery; advancing our security and prosperity interests in the Indo-Pacific; emerging technologies, addressing the challenge of climate change, and vaccine diplomacy.
India and Australia have grown beyond the active agenda prior to the pandemic.
After a long hiatus, the Australia-India-Japan-US Security Quadrilateral Dialogue — informally known as the Quad — was resurrected in 2017 to support a ‘free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific Region’. While there are important differences among the four countries on threat perceptions, military capability, strategic priority, capacity to bear the costs of potential retaliation, strategic culture, and constitutional imperatives, these differences place limitations on Quadrilateral cooperation but do not preclude it. All four countries have common interests in maintaining a stable balance of power in the region, freedom of the seas, an open rules-based economic order, to counter debt-trap diplomacy, and limiting the use of coercion by a state to assert territorial claims. Despite the COVID-19 shock and the domestic upheavals and distractions it poses, this cooperation will continue to deepen.
Assessing the prospects for the Quad starts with the common interests that have drawn the four countries together. These can be grouped into geostrategic interests, geoeconomic interests, and those concerning the nature of the international order. First, all four nations share a deep interest in maintaining a stable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific and preventing a regional state from becoming dominant. Such a state would have the capacity to establish a sphere of influence in the region, to construct rules that favor its interests at the expense of smaller states, and to exclude or limit geographic, economic, and political access to countries outside the region. All four states are committed to the current rules-based economic order in the Indo-Pacific. This is based on free trade, open investment environments, open competitive tendering, the rule of law, and standards of good governance from which all continue to benefit. Hence, if the Quad is to push its weight in the region, it has to have a strong economic element built within it.
Against this backdrop, India Foundation in collaboration with the Wired Global is hosting a webinar on the theme “Quad Economics: Australia & India Perspectives in the Covid era”.
The webinar will highlight the importance of Quad and the role India & Australia will play in achieving further the objectives and the way forward for future with like-minded partners.
Date:Wednesday 21st July 2021
Duration: 60 minutes
Time: 12 noon Indian Standard Time|| 4.30 pm AEST &AEDT
The webinar will commence at 4.30 pm AEDT (Canberra time, UTC+11)
Guest/s of Honour & program to be advised.
Keynote Speakers & moderator details as below
Moderator
Capt. Alok Bansal
About Capt Alok Bansal:
Alok Bansal is the Executive Director of South Asian Institute for Strategic Affairs (SAISA). He has been the Executive Director of the National Maritime Foundation (NMF) and has worked with the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) and Center for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) earlier. He has authored a book titled “Balochistan in Turmoil:Pakistan at Cross Roads’; in 2009 and has co-edited several other books.
Keynote Speakers
Shri Ram Madhav
Fmr National General Secretary – BJP||
Member of National Executive Committee RSS|| Member of Governing Board of India Foundation
Senator Hon Matthew Canavan Australian Parliament
Jim Varghese AM National Chair
Australia India Business Council
Hosted by Akashika Mohla
Director – Wired Global Media & Advisory