Davos Dialogue: World Economic Forum
The Prime Minister addressed the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Davos Dialogue via video conferencing.
- The WEF annual meeting in Davos (Switzerland) engages the world’s top leaders to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
- The Davos Dialogues agenda marks the launch of the WEF’s Great Reset Initiative in the post Covid world.
India’s Fight Against Covid:
- India, took a proactive public participation approach and developed a Covid-specific health infrastructure and trained its resources to fight Covid.
- India, which is the home to the world’s 18% population, has not only taken care of its citizens but also helped other countries by exporting PPE kits and masks.
- India guided the world how traditional medicine (Ayurveda) could help in improving immunity.
- India has developed two coronavirus vaccines so far which have been exported to other countries and the world would see many more Made in India vaccines in the coming days.
Indian Economy During the Pandemic:
- India has maintained economic activity by starting infrastructure projects worth billions of rupees and initiating special schemes for employment such as:
- Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan: The scheme empowered and provided livelihood opportunities to the returnee migrant workers and rural citizens who have returned to their home states due to the Covid-19 induced lockdown.
- India’s ambition of self-reliance (Aatmanirbhar Bharat) will strengthen globalism and will help in Industrial revolution 4.0.
- India is working on all the four factors of Industrial revolution 4.0 which are connectivity, automation, artificial intelligence or machine learning and real-time data.
India’s Digital Infrastructure:
- Growing digital infrastructure has made digital solutions everyday part of life in India.
- It has made public service delivery efficient and transparent.
- 1.3 billion Indians have universal ID- Aadhar which is connected to their account and phone.
- In December 2020, there has been 4 trillion rupees worth of transactions through Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
- India could transfer 1.8 trillion rupees worth of assistance through direct benefit transfer to the accounts of 760 million Indians during the pandemic.
- India has started a campaign named National Digital Health Mission for providing easy access to health care by giving Unique Health ID to its citizens.
India and Climate Change:
- India is matching its growth with the goals of climate change.
Few Indian Initiatives to Fight Climate Change:
- National Clean Air Programme (NCAP): It is a five-year action plan with a tentative target of 20-30% reduction in concentrations of PM10 and PM2.5 by 2024, with 2017 as the base year.
- India has also shifted from Bharat Stage-IV (BS-IV) to Bharat Stage-VI (BS-VI) emission norms from 1st April 2020 which was earlier to be adopted by 2024.
- It has distributed more than 360 million LED bulbs under the UJALA scheme, which has led to an energy saving of about 47 billion units of electricity per year and a reduction of 38 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
- India is focussing on sustainable urbanization with focus on ease of living, ease of doing business and climate sensitive development.
About World Economic Forum:
- The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Swiss nonprofit foundation established in 1971, based in Geneva, Switzerland.
- Recognized by the Swiss authorities as the international institution for public-private cooperation.
- Mission: Committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.
- Founder and Executive Chairman: Klaus Schwab.
