India matters because when the citizen of the country goes to the ballot box to press the button to cast their votes, it is a collective effort, a decision to flourish, and move the country ahead. It has an enormous impact on the front where and how the country will head. Today, “the Bharat matters because we have changed and the prime minister Modi is leading us”. The external affairs minister Jaisankar says while addressing the intellectuals in Odisha.
In the G20 Submit, when India took over the residency for it in December 2022, most of the foreign countries felt India was going to face a very hard time managing the summit. Yet, in September 2023, on the first day of the summit, India was able to persuade everybody to reach a consensus position on the most important issue of the day. We are in a very unique position at present. The countries in the West are in a deep division such as Russia and China. There are big issues between the developed countries in the north and developing countries in the south. But India can bridge it by taking a position as everybody regards us as fair and reasonable, and also by creating consensus.
In the recent past, we all have gone through the most difficult problems of our lifetime. The problem was something of a once-in-a-century happening, the Covid. There is not a single person in the world whose life has not been impacted by the pandemic. When covid started in January 2020, there was a virtual G20 meeting then. There was a presentation made in the meeting conveying covid cannot be stopped and it would affect every single corner of the world, millions of people could lose their lives to this virus. The biggest concern in that meeting was about the repercussions the virus would cause in India. Because the general impression in the world, among all the governments, and UN organisations, WHO about India was that India will face the biggest and hashest problem during COVID-19.
The result factually shows, how India dealt with it. We had the biggest ability to resolve the national crisis. We went through the lockdown, set up COVID centres, and produced masks, app kits, ventilators, and medicines that could increase the pharmaceutical industries massively. The country eventually ended up supplying vaccines to other countries.
Talking about the post-COVID situation, many of the countries still have not recovered from COVID. They are psychologically scared, and economically shattered deeply that the ability to come out of it and get back to normal life is becoming difficult. In contrast to this India has seen a 7% higher growth rate by resuming its momentum during the pandemic also.
The was considered, ten years back one of the fragile five, today has reached the top five economies in the world. These facts should be reflected. This requires leadership, policies, people’s participation, national will and collective determination. In the last ten years, one of the most important achievements we have made is the landing of Chandrayan 3. It is not only India’s achievement but the entire world feels proud for that. The life of every person nowadays revolves around phones, it is technology. Ten years ago, the data ( 2G, 3G, 4G) is imported from Europe and China. Today we are the fastest-deploying 5G countries in the world, which is not imported but created in India itself.
To come to the core of it, we can achieve within ourselves with the right choice, determination, and leadership to make Bharat happen/ matter. The world is keen on knowing the unsure story of India. The basic facilities provided to the people at the grassroots level, the free ration, gas cylinders replaced by firewood, and health care facilities to the average Indian, are a hundred million. The scale of reaching and doing welfare measures are some was bigger than the population of countries and continents. In the last ten years under the PM Awas Yojana, we have built 40 million homes in India. India has an average family size of 4.8, which indicates about 180 million people have got a house that they did not have earlier. This is the tentative population of countries like Japan or Germany. Under the Arna Yojana, feeding 815 million people is equivalent to the size of the population of both America and Europe together.
The business culture has developed among the young masses. The number of airports has increased from 70 to 149. The building of national highways and railway tracks on a per-day basis has hiked humongous. The infrastructural development has been happening daily. The idea of inclusivity like everybody will get proper health care, better education, electricity, piped water, and place of habitation has been the motto. When it is spoken, Bikasit Bharat can only be possible through the right leadership, preparation, and system. We have to use the new technology, programs, and opportunities so that we don’t have to take the same route as other people. We can move faster and reach ahead of the other countries.
The global situation is also not sound, in the coming five years the situation will become worse. The conflict in Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East, Gazza, the tension between Iran and Israel, and the attacks on the shipping taking place in the Red Sea, are the testimony of it. The occurrences in Asia are less like the tension in the South China Sea, our borders the challenges we face with China. Other than the sphere of security climate change, big climate events with great disruptive possibilities are now happening. A large part of Africa and Latin America, have not recovered from covid. In many cases, all the progress they have made in terms of health, infrastructure and education is mostly repressed. So the global trends are very difficult but yet there are opportunities. We are the kind of country which knows how to use those opportunities.
When the covid happened many countries were dependent on China for their industries, raw materials, process materials, and components. As COVID first affected China, all the countries panicked that their supplies and industries would be at a halt. It is still one of the biggest concerns in the world that every country’s decency is total on one geography. If that one particular country or geographical point is in a problem for a certain reason, everything goes for a toss. Therefore the world is looking to create more production centres, and supply chains owing to de-risking the International economy. This is also happening in the food sector. India is by and large a self-sufficient country, it does not import food supplies anymore except for a very few occasional scenarios when it comes to edible oil and pulses. But this is not the case with many other countries in the world.
Coming to talk about technology, particularly mobile phones, that knows more about us than we do. In this case, any person, stranger, the person we don’t like can access our phone. There are various digital ways to do so. Digital privacy and security, the value of data, and the whole idea that we are in a world of artificial Intelligence are very worrisome that somebody would guide us and predict what to do. So are worried about our supply chains including food, health etc, and also security of data is a huge concern.
To block and protect our data we have a tremendous resource which is people. We have various rules and regulations, blocked many apps and games etc. The reason Indian data is as much of a resource as the mineral in the ground. To protect and utilise our data properly, we have to use our human resources. Many parts of the world are demographically challenged. Paradoxically, Where there is development, there are no/fewer people and where there is technology there is less talent. The challenge is to balance the demographics and demand. Here comes the new education policy system which has been peer headed by Dharmendra Pradhan. Prime Minister Modi talks about cultural innovation, skills training, and expanding technical education in the NEP. The purpose of it is to prepare the young India to take full advantage of the new possibilities in the world.
So to say, in the time of global workplace we must choose a government that will give us safety and security and a sense of entitlement in the foreign land to protect ourselves, the people who work abroad in case of a crisis, war, tensions and any unlikely adverse situations. For many years there has been this belief in the world that there is a need for an authoritarian government to deliver. We have to show that democracies can also deliver. It can be done by making wise choices in a democracy, by electing people who have the vision of progress, and who dare to change the country. India is not just another country, it is a country with 5000 years of history. When we once again come to the top which is where we were once upon a time, will make a profound impact on the world. We all should see this as our responsibility. We should reflect on it and think that what we are doing has a much larger implication. When a billion people vote their vote changes the nation.
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