'Accept the rise of India, China'

The West ought to come to terms with the rise of India and China, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said today, and asked global institutions to evolve and change for accommodating the new reality in the multilateral framework.

Restructuring of United Nations and UN Security Council is as important as reforms in the global trading regime, the Prime Minister said at the London School of Economics Asia Forum here.

"We need global institutions and global rules that can facilitate the peaceful rise of new nations. It also means global institutions and frameworks of co-operation must evolve and change to accommodate the new reality. This is as true for the reform and revitalisation of the United Nations and the restructuring of the UN Security Council, as it is true for the management of multilateral trading regime, for the protection of global environment and the security of energy supplies," he said.

"Just as the world accommodated the rejuvenation of Europe in the post-War period, it must accommodate the rise of new Asian economies in the years ahead," he added.

Singh said India and China were bound to regain a considerable part of their share of the world GDP that they had lost during the two centuries of European colonialism. China has already trebled its share of world GDP over the past two decades while India has doubled it.

While Japan would continue to be at the top in the foreseeable future, the newly industrialising economies of East and South East Asia would also grow even if not at rates witnessed in the past two decades.