India showcased its strengths during Covid peak: PM Modi tells world
Says India is a pharma hub, has over 50 lakh software developers
New Delhi, Jan. 17 (Delhi Crown): Addressing the World Economic Forum, Davos Agenda, virtually on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India had shown its prowess and strength in successfully meeting the challenges of climate change and health crisis, and countering the culture of throwaway consumerism.
Reiterating his country’s unwavering trust in democracy, PM pitched for the increasing use of technology in the 21st century and the proven Indian talent pool to release and realise existing and future global development targets.
“In this period of the Covid pandemic, India (has) showcased its strength by providing free food to more than 80 crores of our citizens. Today, India is the third-largest pharma producer in the world. We have vaccinated a majority of our citizens (156 crore vaccines) against the Coronavirus and provided free food to about 800 million (80 crores) people,” he added.
With regard to the digitisation of payments, the PM said India was the world’s largest, safest and most successful digital payments platform. This was reflected in the 4.4 billion transactions that have taken place in India in December alone through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
Modi appealed for the need to make changes in lifestyle to counter climate change, warning that the current culture of throwaway consumerism has made the challenge of dealing with global warming far more serious.
The Prime Minister used his address to reiterate India’s commitment to achieving a green, clean, sustainable and reliable environment by 2070.
“Though India constitutes 70 percent of the global population, it takes up a power commission of only five percent. Our effort for sustainable development is 100 percent, he said.
India’s entrepreneurial spirit was there for all to see with the last eight years seeing an exponential rise in the number of start-ups, from a few hundred to over 60,000 currently.
“The last six months alone had seen the registration of more than 10,000 start-ups,” Modi said, adding that the country currently has over 50,00,000 software developers.