9.30 am
Special Address session moderated by Dr. Prodipto Ghosh distinguished fellow, Earth Science and Climate Change, TERI.
Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia now speaking
Domestically a lot to be done to gain momentum and to really figure out what is needed to be done unilaterally towards sustainable development. I am frankly a bit disappointed with what’s happening globally, I think at the planning commission we are focussing on what we need to do rather than worrying about what is happening at the global front.
In India we are definately integrating energy policies. The main thing the Planning commission is doing is to work on ways how we can handle energy domestically by achiving what we said we would achieve, that is a 20% reduction in emission.
Also, the companies should put their revenue money into further research and innovation. There is no feasible way by which budgetary money could go into research but the companies can do that.
Audience question – how much of the global efforts have been internalized in Indian economy?
I don’t particularly approve the idea of the global community deciding what the initiatives should be, so I don’t know what is meant by ‘internalize’, in many respects India is a leader in these matters and we are rather externalizing global action. We have a national action plan, that we would do anyway, which may and may not align with global plan, which in my opinion is not very sufficient anyway.