Former UK minister and Tory MP Suella Braverman recalled her early memories of India as she toured the length and breadth of the country with her mother as a child and shared her experience when she backpacked across the nation again as an adult 30 years later -- only to discover a transformed India. She lauded the country and the citizens on the various success stories from the historic landing of the Chandrayaan 3 on the moon's south police to the successful G20 presidency.
She said, "From achieving the first landing by the Chandrayaan 3 mission on the moon's South pole -- the victory cry of a new India, the G20 presidency last year when we saw a new approach to multilateralism led by India which meant a new voice for the global South in the international discourse... on digital public infrastructure India has been decisive in her leadership -- having witnessed the revolutionary impact of digital innovations of Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker first hand and as the world's largest democracy with the fastest-growing economy in the world with the IMF upgrading India's economic growth to 6.5 per cent for 2024, 2025 -- figures that we look at jealously in the UK, there is a huge amount to be excited and optimistic about India's future in the world stage."
Speaking on the issue of immigration in the UK, she said, "In 2022 we had 45,000 people crossing the English Channel on a dingy illegally. They did not have the legal right to live in the UK. They were leaving a safe country like France to live in the UK, undermining our border security. This is an issue or pressing salience. The British people are frustrated with what they see on our southern border and it happened Post Brexit and the government must fix it."
"I have been attempting to reflect the very strong concern of the majority of British people about illegal migration in the UK. We need to take a firm and fair approach. It's a humanitarian challenge, people are dying in the Channel to get to the UK, they are being exploited by criminal gangs and people smugglers, they are often vulnerable but they are abusing our immigration rules and it cannot continue," she added.
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Suella Braverman, a firebrand parliamentarian from the Conservative party in the UK, has often been in the eye of the storm for her views, especially on the topic of immigration. The former UK minister's policy seeking to deport immigrants to Rwanda sparked a massive discussion and elicited diverse reactions. It is at this crucial juncture when the West is rethinking its immigration policies and the conversation around porous borders is more relevant than ever, that ABP Network's 'Ideas Of India Summit' sought to understand Braverman's views in the session 'The World in Ferment: Closing Borders, Brutal Wars'.
Braverman, a prominent figure in the Conservative Party and a legal expert began her parliamentary career in 2015 representing Fairham. She served as the attorney general for England and Wales from 2020 to 2022 and advocated for Brexit when she held a junior ministerial position in the Brexit department in the tenure of them-PM Theresa May's premiership. However, she stepped down from the position over her disagreements with May's proposed Brexit deal.
Braverman has her roots in India with her parents immigrating from Kenya and Mauritius in the 1960s, with her mother's Hindu Tamil and father's Goan origins.
Building on the success of its preceding editions themed 'Naya India' and 'Open-Minds Open Minds,' the upcoming summit pledges to the maintain its tradition of fostering dialogues on the driving forces shaping India's trajectory.