Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing the World Economic Forum's online Davos Agenda Summit, said India faced many challenges when coronavirus outbreak happened but it kept on moving ahead. "In just 12 days, we have inoculated more than 2.3 million of our health workers. In a few months, we will inoculate around 300 million senior citizens," PM Modi said.
The Davos Dialogues agenda marks the launch of the World Economic Forum's great reset initiative in the post-COVID-19 world.
Prime Minister Modi is addressing the World Economic Forum's Davos Dialogue via video conferencing. More than 400 top industry leaders from across the globe are attending the session, where the prime minister spoke on the Fourth Industrial Revolution-using technology for the good of humanity.
Here are the Highlights from PM Modi's address at Davos:
- Last year in February and March, a lot of experts had said that India will be the worst-affected country due tot he pandemic and there will be a tsunami of cases. A lot of them predicted 2 million deaths in the country. But, India with a proactive public participation kept moving ahead.
- Someone had even said that 700-800 million would be infected and someone had said that over 2 million Indians would die from the pandemic. Looking at the condition of countries with better health infrastructure, the world was right in worrying about us.
- We trained all our human resources to fight the coronavirus pandemic. We used technology to the fullest The country, which comprises of 18% of the world's population, has saved the world from disaster by bringing the situation under control.
- In just 12 days, we have inoculated more than 2.3 million of our health workers. In a few months, we will inoculate around 300 million senior citizens and those with co-morbidities.
- Right now there are two made in India vaccines. World Economic Forum will be relieved to know that in the time to come many more vaccines will come from India. We are not only fulfilling our needs of PPE kits and masks, but also exporting and helping other countries.
- India has started the world's largest vaccination drive as well.
- India's success will help the world succeed. We are committed to strengthen the global supply chain. We have the capability and reliability for that.
- Coronavirus has taught us the importance of humanity. We guided the world how India's traditional medicine, Ayurveda, can help in improving immunity. 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.
- India is one of the few countries where the maximum data is available. Mobile connectivity reaches most of our areas, and our expert pool of automation designs is huge. India's software engineers are making their presence felt globally in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning since a long time.
- India continued its economic activities during COVID with infrastructure work worth trillions of rupees, providing employment. We stressed on saving every single life. India, now, is walking ahead to become "Aatmanirbhar" (self-reliant).
- In these tough times, India has been undertaking its global responsibility from the beginning. When airspace was closed in many countries, India took over 1 lakh citizens to their countries and delivered essential medicines to more than 150 countries.
- Infrastructure is the supporting pillar of an economy. In the last six years, in India, 57,000 km inter-state highways have been built while over 58% of railway lines were electrified.
- I want to assure business world that situation will now change rapidly on economic front also. In 2020, FDI increased by 13% in India despite the pandemic.
- We are trying to connect MSMEs to artificial intelligence and machine learning. A total of 1.3 million street vendors are now connected to digital economy.
- Today, there are 1.3 billion Aadhaar cards, 1.1 billion mobile users, 750 internet subscribers in India. The country is focusing on many aspects: providing access to digital facilities to everyone is one of them. Second is promoting competition, as we believe in opening up the market. Third aspect is frontier technology investment. Fourth is data and privacy -- a law on data privacy is being worked on. Another aspect is Aatmanirbharta.
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