Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh V Shringla cautions against debt trap diplomacy

New Delhi: Foreign Secretary Harsh V Shringla while on his visit to Berlin pulled up Chinas BRI in a veiled fashion and cautioned against growing debt trap diplomacy and outlined India’s inclusive vision for the Indo-Pacific region.

“Threats to nation states and sovereignty can also come in other forms. The world is increasingly witnessing debt trap diplomacy in the garb of improving infrastructure and connectivity without heeding financial viability or environmental concerns. While there is no doubt that connectivity among nations needs to be improved, we have to be cautious about the terms of engagement,” Shringla is understood to have told his German interlocutors on Monday.

“Similar is the case with data and of cyber-governance we cannot afford to trample on democratic, transparent norms, or the need for multi-stakeholderism. We have to be wary of initiatives on data which are not transparent and are not negotiated in multilateral forums. We are all for cyber security and use of data for greater common good, but we cannot accept non-inclusive measures to achieve it” Shringla is understood to further stated.


The Indo-Pacific region has begun to occupy an important place in Germany’s strategic outlook and India is an important actor here. “In the recent German foreign policy turn towards the Indo-Pacific, India is perhaps the most reliable partner to implement our shared vision for the region,” he suggested.

German companies can find in India everything that they are looking for; one of the fastest growing economies, the fourth largest start-up ecosystem after the US, China and the UK, with 21 unicorns, and a large and growing market,
according to the senior diplomat as he pitched for German investments. India’s rapidly growing digital sector has one of the largest data ecosystems in the world. These are all high on the priority list for German industry.

“Despite the combined size of our economies being more than 5 trillion euros, our bilateral trade volume is only around 19 billion euros, which means that there is massive potential for trade.”

Both Germany and India are tech-driven economies with a major focus on adopting the principles of Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence, etc. This provides immense scope for collaboration, according to the Foreign Secretary who is on three-nation Europe trip.