“There is not going to be any shortage which could lead to any shortfall in supply. So it takes care of the power situation of India. We are now a power surplus country: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman
in the midst of ongoing news Coal shortage in the countryFinance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asserted that there is no shortage and termed these as “absolutely baseless”, adding that India is a power surplus country.
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Ms Sitharaman said that Power Minister RK Singh had gone on record two days back when she said Absolutely baseless information floating around that maybe there is a shortage of coal, lack of other inventions that would cause sudden lag Supply demand position in energy consumption.
“Absolutely baseless! There is no shortage of anything. In fact, if I recall the minister’s statement, every power generation establishment has absolutely stock for the next four days in its premises and the supply chain is not broken at all. ,” Ms Sitharaman said on October 12 at Harvard Kennedy School here. .
During the talk organized by the Mosawar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Ms Sitharaman was asked by Harvard professor Lawrence Summers about reports of energy shortages and coal shortages in India.
“There’s going to be no shortage that anyone can have” lack of supply. So it takes care of the power situation of India. Now we are a power surplus country.
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“We are taking a fair amount of risk to see what is available to India in the energy basket, how much is based on fossil fuels and how much comes from renewables and we are always looking at ways to favor it. of renewable energy. So the picture is not of short supply, but it is also a picture of new components in the basket,” she said.
On the vaccination campaign in India against COVID-19 and how the Indian government has managed to come close to delivering one billion doses, Ms Sitharaman said that over the decades, India has consistently built up this institutional arrangement, even in villages. Even at the level of the primary health centers, there are primary health centers and they take care of the basic needs of basic primary care given to the patients in those areas.
“These centers have, over the years, carried out vaccinations for newborns that have to be given from time to time… India has been very successful in containing the spread of polio,” she said. Furthermore, he said that over the years, periodic malaria or seasonal diseases, for which doctors care for patients in a particular area, have made India increasingly vulnerable to handling and treating large epidemic-ratio diseases. given capacity.
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“As soon as vaccines became available, our systems were ready to be fanned out, even going to some remote areas to give doses to people. So, the institutional arrangement in India has always been the framework that has been created over the years,” she said.
She said the question with regard to vaccines was whether they were to be preserved in a certain temperature and distributed across India.
“Luckily the two vaccinations we have used are quite suited for Indian conditions and hence the logistics required to transport it from one place to another was not much of a challenge and hence we have been successful,” she said.
Vaccine Covishield is a version of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India. Covaxin is an indigenously developed vaccine by the pharma company Bharat Biotech.
He said that India is providing vaccines free of cost through bilateral arrangements with some countries.
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