India's Foreign Minister on climate, Kashmir

(24 Sep 2019) India's Foreign Minister Tuesday said he believes the ability of India achieving United Nation's sustainable development goals will have an impact on the international community to achieve the targets because "our numbers are so big." Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, speaking at the Asia Society on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, credited Indian Prime Minister Nadrendra Modi. "A lot of the changes in India are led by national campaigns very often directly personally pushed by the Prime Minister, " he said.  "Campaigns about closing the gender gap, education campaigns, about digital connectivity, about cleanliness, about sanitation, about urbanization, about education, about skills. These these are not just slogans," Jaishankar said. India has taken the lead in addressing the challenges of climate change, according to minister Jaishankar. "There is a big attitudinal shift on climate change" in India Jaishankar said. "At Paris, I think the difference was that we took the view that look if it is really existential, you know, then you can't say on the one hand it's existential but it's subject to kind of nitty gritty of bargaining. And I think we decided that we would actually take the lead in addressing the climate change challenges," Jaishankar said. The foreign minister also addressed India's decision to revoke Kashmir's special status.    "The provision in the Constitution which gave Kashmir the different status was a temporary approach," Jaishankar said. In the the Constitution of India, "it's written out there the word temporary is out there on the heading of the segment as well as the article in question." "After 70 years it came to an end." Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...