External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday noted how intergovernmental agreements dealing with mobility have become a very important part of India’s diplomacy.
“Clearly today, intergovernmental agreements dealing with mobility are a very important part of our diplomacy. We have 21 such agreements in addition to which we have mobility provisions in some of the free trade agreements that we have done,” Jaishankar said in his address at India’s World Annual Conclave 2025.
He highlighted the strides made in the last ten years on the front of mobility of Indian talent through the expansion of passport services, to welfare funds for Indians abroad and how Indian demography is stepping up and meeting the needs of the world. “We are 1/6th of the world’s population, and when you look at the younger working age population, we are around 1/4th of the global workforce of a certain demography. So, our relevance to the global talent skill market is only going to grow.”
Jaishankar shared that while mobility has its politics in the receiving society, managing that is also a part of the diplomatic challenge. He noted that several challenges arise when mobility is not legal.
“When mobility is legal, when mobility is formal, then it has a lot of benefits. But when it is not, then I think it is actually almost a magnet for every kind of bad business to be associated. If you look at trafficking, per se, all the associated crimes and often, it leads people with agendas of various kinds- political agendas, separatist agenda, they all join up to the illegal mobility side of it.”