It is not the purpose of an inaugural address to suggest or anticipate the kind of conclusions that a conference or a seminar ought to arrive at. Nor do I propose to remind you of the objectives enshrined in the International Development Strategy for the Second Development Decade which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in October 1970. But I hope you will forgive me if I outline before you a few basic considerations which must be kept in mind if your deliberations are to produce results and conclusions which are in consonance with what mill'ons of people in the developing world are feeling and thinking about today. A politician is expected to know the pulse of the people; and it is what ordinary people everywhere feel and desire that I can, perhaps, best put across to this distinguished gathering. I know that the major preoccupation of the Seminar will be with matters concerning economic cooperation and, accordingly, I shall eschew all political issues in my remarks, although I am sure you would not be surprised if I say that it is some of these political issues which are uppermost in our mind in India at the present stage.
First and foremost, there is a feeling among millions of people in the developing world that the kind of partnership that we have so far secured through our international economic institutions is a grossly unequal one. I am not referring to the differences in the levels of living or the growing distance between the rich and the poor. I am referring to the fact that the international institutions we created in the wake of the Second World War, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, reflected a philosophy which appears totally out of date today to most countries which had very little say in the shaping of those institutions. The developing world of today was the colonial world then and had little say in deciding how our international economic institutions should function. The big powers who won the war, not without the suffering and sacrifices of the people of the then colonial world, reserved for themselves a predominant position in the governing body of the international institutions. Even those institutions which came into being at a later date and on a regional scale are run by and large on the principle that those who pay the piper must be allowed to call the tune. I am not one of those romantics who feel that power, whether economic, political or military, will not speak in some way or the other no matter what the form of organisations we seek to create. But the time has come when we can no longer take for granted the present distribution of power and responsibility in the management of our international institutions. If there is to be a genuine world partnership, it has to be reflected first and foremost in a greater willingness to share in the process of taking decisions regarding how this partnership is to be actually brought about in practice. Without that, the words, "world partnership" will ring a little hollow in millions of ears.