Focus on India-UK ties as Sunak becomes PM

Sunak’s vision for India-U.K. bilateral ties has gone beyond the opportunity for the U.K. to sell things in India, wanting Britain to also “learn from India”….reports Asian Lite News

India’s bilateral relations with the U.K. may well be poised to see greater two-way exchanges as Rishi Sunak was installed as Britain’s first Indian-origin Prime Minister on Tuesday, scripting an impressive political comeback in British politics.

Sunak, 42, was elected Conservative Party leader on Monday, marking a very special Diwali for the former Chancellor of Exchequer who entered 10 Downing Street as the youngest British Prime Minister in 210 years.

His vision for India-U.K. bilateral ties has gone beyond the opportunity for the U.K. to sell things in India, wanting Britain to also “learn from India”.

“The U.K. doesn’t have a monopoly on opportunity. There’s an enormous amount of opportunity in India, we also want to make sure that if this living bridge is going to be a real thing, we have got to make it easier for people in the U.K. to go to India, to study at world-class institutions to go work in all these amazing start-ups,” Sunak said recently when he was Chancellor.

“I want to make sure that it’s easy for our students to also travel to India and learn, that it’s also easy for our companies and Indian companies to work together because it’s not just a one-way relationship, it’s a two-way relationship, and that’s the type of change I want to bring to that relationship,” the former investment banker-turned-politician had said, while outlining his vision for India-U.K. ties.

In his first address as Prime Minister, he pledged to approach the country’s problems with “compassion” and “to place economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government’s agenda”.

Sunak’s historic milestone as the country’s first non-white Prime Minister is being widely celebrated as a sign of the diversity of modern-day Britain. He took over from Liz Truss just 49 days after she defeated him in the last leadership race and while he admitted mistakes were made, he praised his predecessor’s “restlessness” and “noble aim” to improve economic growth in the U.K.

Sunak, whose parents—retired doctor Yashvir and pharmacist Usha Sunak—are of Indian descent, tracing their migration route from Kenya to the U.K. in the 1960s. The Southampton-born Prime Minister is married to Infosys co-founder Narayan Murthy’s daughter Akshata Murthy and the couple have two daughters, Krishna and Anoushka.

His grandparents originated from British India but their birthplace Gujranwala lies in modern day Pakistan’s Punjab province.

As the third premier in the space of just seven weeks after Johnson’s partygate exit and Liz Truss’ mini-Budget fiasco, the road ahead is anything but smooth for the new leader, who faces the uphill task of fixing the “profound economic crisis” facing the U.K. and uniting a deeply divided Conservative Party.

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