Address by HE Ms. Nagma M Mallick, Ambassador of India to Poland on the occasion of 76th Republic Day of India
Your Excellency Mr Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland,
Your Excellencies Madame Dorota Niedziela, Mr Krzysztof Bosak, Vice Marshals of the Sejm,
Your Excellency Mr Mariusz Frankowski, Voivode of Mazowieckie,
Mr. Marian Banas, President of the Supreme Audit office,
Distinguished representative of the President’s Chancellery,
Distinguished representative of the Prime Minister’s Chancellery,
Other dignitaries from the Government of Poland,
Distinguished colleagues from the Diplomatic Corps,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Namaskar, Dzien Dobry,
I am delighted to welcome you to the Embassy of India.
On 26th January 1950, the Constitution of India came into effect. It had been adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India earlier on 26 November 1949. The Republic Day thus marks the conscious delineation of the people of India of their own identity as a ‘Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic’ as enshrined in the Preamble to our Constitution. India’s democracy rests on and is ensured by the Constitution. Last year, we had our General Elections – the largest ever democratic exercise in the world in which 642 million Indian citizens voted, of which 310 million were women. These figures set new world records: this was the highest ever participation by women in a single election and this was also the largest number of voters who voted in a single election. Prime Minister Narendra Modi won the popular mandate and was sworn in as Prime Minister for a third term. Our citizens’ commitment to democracy and support for Prime Minister Modi was expressed regularly thereafter in provincial assembly elections held in important states of India.
2. Over the decades after that first Republic Day, India achieved many milestones. I will begin with a quick word on the economic parameters. In 2024, India continued to be the fastest-growing major economy of the world, becoming the fifth largest economy in absolute terms, with a GDP of US$ 3.9 trillion. India’s GDP is expected to grow by 6.4% in the current fiscal year. I will mention only a few other economic figures today.
3. India has an installed capacity of 200 Gigawatts of renewable energy already, underscoring our commitment to green energy. We are seeking to make the green transition a people’s movement – 10 million families have registered for the world’s largest solar roof top programme. India launched the International Solar Alliance in 2015 and since then over 100 countries have joined it. Under the One Sun One World One Grid project we are cooperating with partner countries on energy connectivity. Under the campaign ‘Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam’, or one tree for mother earth led by our Prime Minister, we have planted more than a billion trees in India in the year gone by, including one at our Embassy planted by Ms. Kinga Gajewska, member of the Polish Sejm.
4. India is a global digital leader. We have the second largest telecom network in the world with 1.2 billion cellphone users, the LOWEST data tariff in the world of 16 cents per Gigabyte of data and a high data usage of 21.3 Gigabyte per month per subscriber. Our people have taken to digital payments, e-commerce and digital banking wholeheartedly. India’s UPI or United Payments Interface, an online payment system, recorded 172 billion transactions in 2024, an annual increase of 46%. Amazon has been forced into second place in India behind Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce rival that commands over 1/3rd of the Indian market. And in digital banking, e-wallets like PayTM and others, are used by hundreds of millions of people, including vegetable sellers and micro-businesses. This Digital India way of life continues to create new opportunities for small and big businesses.
5. We have made important strides in indigenous defence manufacturing to ensure an Atmanirbhar Bharat, or a self-reliant India. Today, with public-private partnership, we make land, air and naval systems. To name just a few domestically developed systems, the Dhanush Artillery System, the Main Battle Tank Arjun, Infantry Combat Vehicles, unmanned aerial systems have all been inducted into our defence forces. In the past decade, of the 40 vessels inducted into the Indian Navy, including 33 ships and 7 submarines, 39 have been built in Indian shipyards, including the aircraft carrier INS Vikrant and nuclear submarines INS Arihant and INS Arighat.
6. Among these new economic figures, we never lose sight of one early achievement by India’s farmers and scientists – our attaining food self-sufficiency through what we call the Green Revolution. From being a net importer of food-grains through the 1950s and 1960s, India became self-sufficient in food-grain production by the late 1960s by planting high-yielding dwarf varieties of rice and wheat. Today we are able to feed our population of 1.4 billion and export food-grains to the world.
7. The Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO had significant achievements to its credit in the year gone by. Under its SpaDeX Mission, ISRO achieved space docking of satellites last week, becoming only the fourth country to have evolved this technology which is critical for sending supplies to space stations and to crew missions in space. Our Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle successfully launched the European Space Agency's Proba-3 satellites into their designated orbit in December 2024. Our scientists are seeking to grow plants in space: the seeds of black-eyed-peas germinated on 30th December and this holds out hope for growing food in space in the future.
8. India completed the Genome India Project in 2025 in which the genome sequencing of 10,000 individuals from 99 different ethnic groups across the country has been mapped. This is a milestone in Indian biotechnology and will assist our scientists in understanding India's genetic landscape.
9. And in December 2024, Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju defeated the defending champion to become the youngest ever world chess champion at the age of 18. We are proud to have hosted him in Warsaw in May last year along with other young Indian Grandmasters Praggnananda, Vaishali and Arjun. I am happy to inform you that there is also a Poland connection here - Gukesh’s official coach is Polish Grandmaster Grzegorz Gajewski. Three other Poles: Rados?aw Wojtaszek, Jan-Krzysztof Duda (his sparring partner) and Jan Klimkowski are part of his coaching team.
Friends,
10. I will speak now on India-Poland bilateral relations. In 2024, we completed 70 years of bilateral relations between India and Poland.
11. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi paid an official visit to Poland in August last year. This was a historic visit that took place 45 years after the last visit of an Indian Prime Minister to Poland. Prime Minister Modi held discussions with His Excellency Prime Minister Donald Tusk. He also called on His Excellency President Andrzej Duda. Our Prime Ministers announced the elevation of the India-Poland bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership. Prime Minister paid homage to the Dobry Maharaja Memorial, which commemorates the contribution of HH Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, the Jamsaheb of Nawanagar, in providing refuge to over a thousand Polish children during the Second World War. He also paid his respects to the Kolhapur Memorial, which commemorates the Valivade camp set up by the Royal family of Kolhapur which housed over 5,000 Polish women and children in the same period. He paid homage at the Monte Cassino Memorial where Indian and Polish soldiers fought shoulder-to-shoulder under Allied command. Prime Minister Modi paid his respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He also announced the launch of the Jamsaheb Memorial Youth Exchange Programme under which 20 Polish youth will visit India every year as our guests, including to the erstwhile Balachadi and Valivade camps in Jamnagar and Kolhapur respectively. I am happy to share that the first group of Polish youth, many of them the grandchildren of those who spent their childhood in India, will travel to India next month. The India-Poland Social Security Agreement, announced during Prime Minister’s visit to Poland, was signed in Warsaw in November last year. After the ratification of this Agreement by both sides later this year, Indian citizens working in Poland and Polish citizens employed in India will enjoy portability of social security and pension-related benefits.
12. HE Mr. Wladyslaw Bartozewski, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, visited India in February last year and met with our Minister of State, Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi. Secretary Bartoszewski and Minister Lekhi jointly announced the winning entry of a competition open to Indian and Polish nationals for designing a logo to celebrate 70 years of our bilateral ties. The winning logo is notable for its elegant simplicity and we too have adopted this logo for our commemorative events. You can see this logo at the start of our photo-exhibition in the corridor outside.
13. Mr. R. Venkataramani, Attorney General of India, and Mr. Tushar Mehta, Solicitor General, the senior-most law officers of India, visited Poland last year. They met with Justice Bartlomiej Sochanski of the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland and with Mr. Dariusz Korneluk, the National Prosecutor of Poland.
14. We are happy that a 22-member India-Poland Parliamentary Friendship Group has been formed with Ms. Kinga Gajewska, as its President. Last month, a delegation of Polish parliamentarians led by Mrs. Dorota Niedziela, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm and Secretary Bartoszewski attended an investment summit, Rising Rajasthan. The Polish delegation met with Mr. Om Birla, Speaker of our Lok Sabha, the House of the People, Mr. Piyush Goyal, Commerce and Industry Minister and Mr. G. S. Shekhawat, Culture & Tourism Minister.
15. It is fitting that the Defence Wing of our Embassy was re-opened last April after 33 years. The Government of India, with the concurrence of the Government of Poland, opened the Honorary Consulate-General of India in Krakow with consular jurisdiction over the regions of Ma?opolskie, Podkarpackie and ?wi?tokrzyskie.
16. Our bilateral economic relations are growing well. Our annual bilateral trade turnover is now close to USD 6 billion. Bilateral investment is also growing. Two major Indian IT companies, Wipro and TCS, opened new offices in Warsaw this year. Indian-owned companies in Poland employ over 10,000 skilled Poles. TZMO, Poland’s largest investor in India, will later this year open a new manufacturing unit to add to their medical and sanitary product units in India. Polish investment in India employs Indians and helps integrate the Indian economy into the diversified and innovative economic space of the European Union.
17. Poland and India continue to have close cultural ties. Since 200 years, Sanskrit has been studied in Poland. Walenty Skorochód-Majewski composed a grammar of Sanskrit in the 1820s. Poland is today one of the most important centres in the world of Indology, the study of the Sanskrit texts of ancient India. Four of the top universities here have distinguished faculties for Indology and for the study of Hindi and other modern Indian languages. Our sporting ties continue to grow: It was wonderful to welcome the Polish men’s and women’s teams in kho kho, a traditional sport of India, to the Kho Kho World Cup 2025 held in New Delhi last week. Michal Spiczko and Anna Kalbarczyk, the captains of the Polish men’s and women’s teams in Kabaddi, another traditional sport of India, met with our Prime Minister last year.
18. Friends, we are thrilled to welcome to Poland a renowned danseuse from India, Ms. Madhavi Mudgal. Madhaviji is a leading dancer, choreographer and guru of Odissi. This dance, from the eastern state of Orissa, is famous for its particularly graceful style and for the tribhang, the three-way bend of the dancer’s body which you will have occasion to admire shortly. Madhaviji and her dancers will first perform to verses from the Vedas, the ancient Indian texts, and will then present Vadya Vaividhya, a dance that celebrates the percussion instruments of Orissa.
19. We are grateful to the Indian Council for Cultural Relations which has organised the troupe’s visit. I thank TZMO and Wipro for providing local hospitality to the Madhavi Mudgal troupe and hence making possible their visit to Poland. Friends, I invite you to view the photo-exhibition on 70 years of India-Poland Relations that we have mounted: the closeness of India-Poland ties over the decades is on display in it. I thank the Polish Press Agency from which we were able to source many of the historic photographs in the exhibition.
20. I thank Secretary Bartoszewski, the representative of the Government of Poland, for his presence today, and all of you for being here to share our happiness. I thank my Embassy colleagues who’ve worked for weeks to make this event possible.
I end here with two simple wishes -
Long live the Republic of India!
Long live India-Poland friendship!
Thank you.
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