Ambassador Shri Harsh Jain delivered a lecture on India-Kazakhstan relations at Nazarbayev University on 24th November, 2016. The students and faculty of the Graduate School of Public Policy (GSPP) of the University attended the lecture. Dr. Weng Tat Hui, Dean of GSPP of the University introduced the Ambassador. The lecture was followed by a Q & A session.
In his lecture, Ambassador traced the history of links between India and Central Asia dating back to more than 2500 years to the modern times. He recalled that India was one of the first countries to recognize the independence of Kazakhstan in 1991 and establish diplomatic relations.
He spoke about the cooperation between the two countries in political, trade, economy, development partnership, transport, military-technical, cultural and strategic spheres. He underscored that one of the first major investments in Kazakhstan came from Indian businessman Mr. L.N. Mittal and now, there are around 200 Indian companies working in different fields. He spoke about the establishment of Inter-Governmental Commission (IGC) in 1993 as the main institutional mechanism for developing bilateral trade, economic, scientific, technological, industrial and cultural cooperation and constitution of several working groups to support the work of IGC. He also spoke about regular Foreign Office Consultations between the two countries which provide a platform to discuss bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest. He stated that there are high level visits between two countries every 2-3 years, which shape the direction and provide further impetus for development of bilateral relations. He recalled the outcomes of recent high level visits including visit of President Nazarbayev in January, 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in April, 2011 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July, 2015.
He stated that India and Kazakhstan enjoy close cultural relations as evident from the popularity of yoga, Indian films, dance and music in Kazakhstan. He highlighted that Indian Cultural Centre in Nur-Sultan supports cultural and academic exchanges between the two countries and disburses scholarships for higher education in India. He informed that since 1992, more than 1000 people from Kazakhstan have undergone specialized training in India in various disciplines under the ITEC programme and 250 scholarships have been disbursed under ICCR’s General Scholarship Scheme. He also informed about the setting up of the Centre of Excellence in the field of ICT at ENU and a Centre of Indian Music and Dance at Nazarbayev University in 2015.
