Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said in the midst of numerous doubts, India took a proactive public participation approach and developed a COVID-specific health infrastructure and trained its resources to fight COVID. Addressing the World Economic Forum’s Davos Dialogue via video conferencing this evening, Mr Modi said that India is successfully conducting the world’s largest vaccination drive as well.
He said when the pandemic began, someone had even predicted that 700-800 million would be infected and someone had said that over 2 million Indians would perish. He pointed out that looking at the condition of countries with better health infrastructure, the world was right in worrying about India. However India took a proactive public participation approach and developed a COVID-specific health infrastructure and trained its resources to fight COVID, Mr. Modi said. He said technology was fully used for testing and tracking.
The Prime Minister said India is not only fulfilling its needs of PPE kits and masks, but also exporting and helping other countries. He said India has vaccinated over 2 million health workers in record time. In the next few months, India would complete its target of vaccinating 300 million old people and people with co-morbidities.
Mr Modi said India also has shown the world how traditional medicine, like Ayurveda, can help in improving immunity. He further stated that today, India is sending its vaccine to several countries and is helping in developing the infrastructure for successful vaccination, thus saving lives of citizens of other countries.
The Prime Minister said India’s upcoming vaccines will help other countries at a swiffer pace to fight the pandemic. He said even on the economic front, the situation is set to change in the post-COVID era. He added that India continued its economic activities during COVID with infrastructure work worth trillions of rupees, providing employment. He said India stressed on saving every single life and is now walking ahead to become Aatmanirbhar.
He said 1.3 billion people of India have Aadhar, which is connected to their accounts. In December last year, UPI saw transactions worth 4 trillion rupees. Mr Modi said people in the banking sector know how countries worldwide are trying to replicate the UPI system developed by India. He also said India is starting a new initiative to provide a unique health ID to 1.3 billion citizens for easy access to healthcare. He also assured that every success of India will help the world to succeed and Aatmanirbhar Bharat mission is fully committed to global good and global supply chain.
Prime Minister Modi said India has stressed a lot on reforms and incentive-based stimulus in recent times. He pointed out that even during COVID, India has paced structural reforms in all sectors. These reforms are being supported by PLI-schemes. He also said COVID crisis has taught the basics of human values and that industry 4.0 is for humans, and not robots. He cautioned that it must be ensured that technology becomes a tool for ease of living, and not a trap.
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