India's foreign policy today has a much stronger connection with the national security policy, and the country's ability and appetite to shape global agenda is much more than before, said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday.
Addressing a press conference here to mark the first 100 days of the BJP-led government at the Centre in its second tenure, Jaishankar said, "(There is a) much stronger connection between our national security interest and foreign policy - whether you look at the relationship, you look at the activities, you look at the capabilities that we are trying to develop.
"This co-relation between what are our national security goals and what are our foreign policy goals, I think, has also become very much stronger," he said.
The minister said that India is better placed now than before in shaping the global agenda, whether it is climate change or sustainable development.
"Our appetite to shape our global agenda today is much more than it was before. You can see that in an area like climate change, I think you will be seeing that as the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) implementation unfold."
He noted that there is a strong link between what the nation does at home for national, economic and social progress and what is done abroad in terms of diplomacy. "We are leveraging global capabilities, technologies, best practices, resources and partnerships in many ways," he said.
The minister said India has to be seen and heard and its personality has to express itself on the international stage in view of the growing multipolarity in the world today.
"In terms of how we broadly see the words, there is a rebalancing going in the world, that the world is moving towards growing multipolarity, and growing multipolarity means multiple narratives, that India has to be seen, India has to be heard, and India has to be contributing in many ways, and India's personality on the international stage has to express itself," said Jaishankar.
"In addition to all of that, we, like any other country, want to put forth our narrative, our specific interest, and in the last 100 days, some of that has gone to message to the change... though issues... (which have) some foreign policy resonance like changes in Article 370 and longstanding issues like cross border terrorism," he concluded.
( With inputs from ANI )