When we focus attention on small men and on improvements scattered over the vast countryside rather than concentrated in a few giant factories, we also need much greater capacity for organisation. There are extremists who say you cannot do all this unless you follow verbatim the precepts in some blue book or green book or red book. But we hope, as I said before, to work out our salvation without copying wholesale any model or theory or even historical parallel. We know and believe that mass poverty cannot be removed and greater equality with growth a:hieved without establishing a broadly socialist economic order. But socialism also is not a static concept or a concept which can be or need be applied in a uniform or rigid manner everywhere. While the synthesis we seek of freedom, progress, social justice and peace and harmony with all the peoples of the world may be difficult to achieve, it is certainly worth striving for.
Our recent experience has infused confidence in us that this task is not only well worth performing, but can also be adequately fulfilled. The path of development is not always smooth or straight. Our planning and its implementation were subject last year to an un-anticipated stress and strain, due to the influx of a large number of refugees from across our eastern border, who had a commonality of aspiration — for preserving human freedom and dignity. India faced this test and came out of it acknowledged with success and fulfillment. This is a good augury for the future as it teaches us that every nation, however poor, has hidden reserves of strength and unity which can be drawn upon to advantage if the people at large can be inspired by a common purpose which unites them in a common endeavour with other people, whether nearer home or not.
The people of Sweden have not wanting in this spirit of the universal brotherhood of man. Your record in regard to aid — its quality even more than its quantity — has been an example which others can well follow. The initiative taken by Sweden recently to make funds available to the I.D.A. so that it can begin to help Bangladesh even before Bangladesh becomes a member of the I.D.A. is an example of the generosity and imaginativeness with which you have always approached your responsibilities in the field of international economic cooperation. My country has always looked upon Sweden's membership of the India Consortium as a very fortunate thing, because your representatives almost always say things there which we would like to say ourselves. They not only say it, and say it better, but in such matters, it is also better that some things are said by a donor rather than a recipient. I would be failing in my duty if I do not take this opportunity to thank the people and the Government of Sweden for their enlightened and sympathetic approach. On the subject of international economic cooperation — on aid, debt, trade. liquidity and the like — there is a great deal that is wrong today which needs to be rectified. But I do not want to start on yet another speech this evening. At any rate, I should not preach to the converted -- and we should not steal the thunder of the speeches made at UNCTAD III. But I may perhaps refer to one or two points which are uppermost in my mind.