YEAH MERA INDIA --- MERA BHARAT MAHAN

 

Last 5 years have seen India embarking on some amazing projects and executing them successfully at incredible pace. These are all global scale programmes executed at incredible speed, involving multiple agencies across India.

I would like to summarise these here:

Vaccine development:

India unexpectedly went into manufacturing of its own COVID vaccine. With country going into lockdown, Serum Institute of India (SII) responded to the emergency call.

With the pandemic calling for a swift response, Serum Institute of India (SII) partnered with British-Swedish pharmaceutical major AstraZeneca, which had already developed a vaccine candidate AZD1222 in partnership with the University of Oxford. SII started manufacturing it under a licence, with Covishield as the brand name. Bolstered by the availability of Covishield, at the end of 2021 1.5 billion doses were delivered to the people in India. Not only for the domestic, a significant part of coronavirus vaccines exported by India have been gifts to friendly countries. Between mid-January and second week of February 21, India exported more than 16 million doses to around 20 countries.

Vaccination:

Having developed the vaccine, getting around 1.4 bn people in the country vaccinated was a humongous challenge.
India began administration of COVID-19 vaccine on 16 January 2021. As of 4 March 2023, India has administered over 2.2 billion doses overall, including first, second and precautionary (booster) doses of the currently approved vaccines. In India, 95% of the eligible population (12+) has received at least one shot, and 88% of the eligible population (12+) is fully vaccinated.

As on Jan.23 1.3Bn people have been vaccinated as per Govt. data. This is single biggest vaccination in the history.

UPI:

According to a report by the World Bank, India's digital payments have around 410 million people in India use UPI and the Aadhaar-enabled payment system. The digital payment market in India is projected to reach US$160.60bn by 2023 and is expected to grow at a rate of 14.16% annually to reach US$272.80bn by 2027.


Highway construction programme:

India has embarked on a massive highway and road construction programme. Govt. data shows every year we are adding around 10,000km of national highway, which amounts to around 30Km per day.

India Rupee Trade with 18 countries:

Latest in this series, India has signed an agreement with 18 countries to do trade with them in INR. These 18 countries are - Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Botswana, Fiji, Germany, Guyana, Israel, Kenya, Malaysia, Mauritius, Myanmar, New Zealand, Oman, Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda and the United Kingdom.

Summary:

I see that India has initiated some major projects involving technological advances, commercial gains and international repute in last 5 years. Some of these will have far reaching consequences for India.

Govt. of India needs to be applauded.