 "Singh to UN: Robust growth is most important")
Singh's statement came in the context of the aims the international community should set for itself once the timeframe for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expires in 2015. India has met several of the MDGs, especially those dealing with poverty reduction, but others remain out of sight, particularly those relating to sanitation and child malnutrition.
Several in the Indian establishment, however, have grumbled the MDGs were foisted on developing nations, and were too one-sided. India, in international organisations, has typically argued more for a say in what the world community's ends are and less for or against any specific end.
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The prime minister insisted "scepticism about the UN's capacity" was at an all-time high, and that it needed to take more decisions "on the widest possible consent". This was not just a reference to security issues, but to "balancing the equitable needs and responsibilities of nations at different stages of development."
The prime minister, in describing an appropriate post-MDG world, insisted there be "practical and well-defined means of implementation", as well as just goals, and a clear framework to transfer resources from the West to the developing world to fund the development aims.
The developed world has not met its MDG funding commitments, made in the early 2000s - among other reasons, the financial crisis crunched government budgets everywhere.
The rest of the prime minister's speech broke little new ground, and was largely a repetition of long-held shibboleths of Indian foreign policy, though he once again mentioned his meeting Pakistan Prime Minister with Nawaz Sharif.
However, his insistence on the absolute primacy of robust economic growth - and consequent poverty reduction - as the goal for the post-2015 development agenda of the UN is being considered an important departure.