Indian high commissioner to the UK, Ruchi Ghanashyam has said that the bilateral relationship between India and Britain will remain firm despite the turn the ongoing Brexit negotiations take.
In an event organised by the Indian Professionals Forum (IPF) at Chatham House in London on Tuesday (27), Ghanashyam told the gathering in her address that it was important that similarity doesn’t lead to complacency in the bilateral relationship between the two countries.
Delivering her keynote address on the topic, ‘Indo-UK Collaboration: Opportunities and Challenges’, Ghanashyam added, “the India-UK partnership is very old, it has stood the test of time and whatever happens to this Brexit process, whichever way it turns out, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that India and the UK will remain, important partners,”.
“The relationship is both special and deep. One of our greatest strengths is familiarity with one another. But the risk of familiarity is that we must guard against complacency. We must remain conscious of the need not to be complacent,” the Indian diplomat noted.
The UK is scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29, 2019. British lawmakers will discuss British prime minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal in the Parliament on December 11.
“We see considerable potential in the area of health, with some parallels being drawn between the Ayushman Bharat programme and the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). We want to reflect on how India and the UK can collaborate on health care policy and provision,” said IPF founder and president Mohan Kaul speaking on the occasion.
IPF is a Britain based not-to-profit think tank for diaspora dedicated to policy advocacy and a member’s club that supports networking and professional development of Indian origin professionals. The forum is established with the support of the High Commission of India. The members of the forum come from a crosssection of society including academics, artists, scientists, engineers, business and others.
According to the 2011 Census for England and Wales showed Indians were the third largest ethnic community group with 1.4 million people. Around 50 per cent of the UK’s Indians are skilled professionals and rendering their service in business, government, health care, and other sectors.
Also, India is the third biggest investor in the UK recruiting thousands of members. As many as 800 Indian firms in the UK employ 110,000 people in various sectors.
