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External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said that in the next 25 years, the country's Amrit Kaal as espoused by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India will strive to be a developed country and it is logical' that it also seeks to be a global power.

Jaishankar said ‘India is now the fifth largest economy in the world, obviously your interests are more, your responsibilities are more, your contributions are more. There will be many more countries and regions with which you are linked. So one part of it I would say really flows from the growth, from the rise of India’.

The minister said he would not be uni-causal about it and there ‘are a variety of issues which are driving what is clearly a heightened Indian activity and in a way we are also planning ahead’. He said ‘Prime Minister Modi speaks about planning for the next quarter of a century. We have a particular Indian term for it, he said, making a reference to Amrit Kaal'. The goal is really a quarter century from now, we should strive to be a developed country. That's the goal at home. But if you look at the consequences of that, I think in that quarter century, it would be logical that we would also seek to be a global power. If you're going to have a global interest and a global footprint, then it takes time to prepare it. You're not going to turn on a switch and suddenly become global’.