New Delhi: Addressing a press conference at the Kotak International India Insight Summit in New York on Saturday, Nilesh Shah said that India cannot be reduced to simple black-and-white or linear equations.
“India doesn’t disappoint anyone, neither the optimist nor the pessimist. Whatever one says about India, the opposite is also true,” he said, describing the country as a democracy of 1.46 billion people, where diverse thoughts “pulse like the very heartbeat of the nation.”
India achieved COP26 target
Shah then stressed on India’s environmental record, adding that the nations ranks third globally in total greenhouse gas emissions after China and the United States, yet its per capita emissions remain among the lowest in the G20. India, has increased its forest cover by 191,000 hectares, securing third place worldwide for annual net gains over the past decade.
Shah further claimed that while coal still powers 74 per cent of India’s electricity, the nation emerged as the first G20 country to achieve its COP26 non-fossil energy capacity target, 51 per cent, five years early. “In Pavagada the world’s largest single-location solar PV plant sprawls across 56 square kilometers, harnessing the sun at unprecedented scale,” Shah said.
On global trade, he said that despite lacking a comprehensive tariff deal with the United States, India faces among the steepest duties, 50 per cent on key exports. Yet, he said, India and the US recently signed a 10-year defence framework, strengthening ties in security and innovation.
India, he added, honours US sanctions on Iran and Myanmar and recently secured a six-month exemption for the Chabahar Port to ensure humanitarian access. “We import far less Russian energy than China or the EU, yet face an extra 22 per cent US tariff as the sole target for such a penalty,” he said.