BT MindRush: India will become a developed nation in coming years, says Dharmendra Pradhan

India is progressing in the right direction and the country will become a developed nation in the coming years despite hiccups, said Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas and Steel.

Delivering the keynote address at the Business Today MindRush event in Mumbai on Friday, the Union Minister said, "We admit that there are issues in our progress, but PM Modi will not run away from them."

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"India is a liberal democracy, here we have people flying in private jets but at the same time there are people who burn kerosene to light their houses. We are an economically diverse society. So the China model of development will not work," Pradhan said.

Referring to a recent remark by industrialist Rahul Bajaj, Pradhan clarified that the business community in India does not need to fear. We are there along with you for minimum government and maximum governance, he added.

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The Indian industry is going through disruptions but that does not mean that you will die if you don't disrupt, said the Minister, noting that data is the new oil and the government is formulating a new data policy.

The Modi government is implementing welfare-oriented effective interventions in rural India. Listing achievements of the Modi government, he said electricity has reached rural houses, cooking gas has been provided to the poor and toilets have been built to make India open-defecation free.

"Now interventions are happening to provide safe drinking water to over 15 crore people. In the energy space, India has 600 million tonnes of biomass, and efforts are on to make 12 million MT of Bio-CNG in five years. Similar initiatives and innovations are happening in all sectors," the minister added.

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