External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar has said many people are turning to India today to seek solutions.<br />'' <br />''He said India is not a bystander and has contributions to make in all of the big issues of the day like maritime, terrorism, security, and climate change.<br />'' <br />''He was speaking at an event on Geopolitics of Opportunity.<br />'' <br />''Dr Jaishankar said, non alignment was a term of a particular era and a particular geopolitical landscape.<br />'' <br />''He said, if India is to grow by leveraging the international situation, the country has to exploit the opportunities out there.<br />'' <br />''He said the era of great caution and dependence in a sense of multilateralism is to a certain extent gone.<br />'' <br />''Dr Jaishankar said that Japan and Australia have much higher international profile now.<br />'' <br />''He pointed out that India was never part of an alliance system and will never be a part of the alliance system.<br />'' <br />''He also said that the countries who earlier on depended on American decision making are today finding that they have to take a call on several issues.<br />'' <br />''He said many things are decided more regionally today and cited examples of North Africa and the Gulf.<br />'' <br />''He said we are moving towards a multi polar world with strong bipolar characteristics.<br />'' <br />''He said the rise of China has impacted the world very profoundly, but most of all it would impact its immediate neighbourhood.<br />'' <br />''Dr Jaishankar said China's economy is about four and a half times the size of India.<br />'' <br />''He added that while India also grew fairly significantly in the past decades, there is a need to reflect on the fact that there were lots of areas where India could have done better.<br />'' <br />''He pointed out that India did not intensively industrialise, bring reforms and push manufacturing the way many other Asian economies did.<br />'' <br />''Dr Jaishankar said India is in a transition and its reach goes from the Carribbean to the South Pacific. He said, out of 54 countries in Africa, India has projects in 51 countries.<br />'' <br />''He said there is a lot of work to be done and comparison with China is a motivation to do better at home and leverage it outside.<br />'' <br />''The Minister also said that India has a complex neighbourhood.<br />'' <br />''<span style="color: #222222;">He stressed on the need to create structural linkages so that they take care of the political cycles and any volatility that neighbouring countries' politics may bring in. </span><br />