India ‘walked the talk’ during pandemic, says PM Modi

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the pandemic has presented an opportunity to reshape the world order and create systems to address the problems today and tomorrow, and underlined that India has “walked the talk” in a humble way with limited resources to tackle the global crisis. 

Delivering the inaugural address of the Raisina Dialogue 2021, which is being held virtually for the first time owing to the pandemic, Modi said the edition of the event took a place at a “watershed moment in human history”. “A global pandemic has been ravaging the world for over a year.

The last such global pandemic was a century ago. During this pandemic, in our humble way and within our limited resources, we in India have tried to walk the talk. We have tried to protect our own 1.3 billion citizens from the pandemic. At the same time, we have also tried to support pandemic response efforts of others,” he said.

Asserting that mankind will not be able to defeat the pandemic unless “all of us, everywhere, regardless of the colour of our passports, come out of it”, Modi said it is important that a human-centric approach is put in place.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar called for additional manufacturing capacities in countries like India. “India’s ability to manufacture a range of vaccines is an example of global cooperation and said this couldn’t be seen as a “one-way street. Equitable access is critically important in this because we all know that no one will be safe till everyone is safe,” he said, adding that without building additional capabilities, distributive justice will not be enough.