The inaugural Pune Public Policy Festival (PPPF) wrapped up on Saturday at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics.
The event featured 23 speakers, including notable figures such as Shamika Ravi, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Ajit Ranade, Vice-Chancellor of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Shekhar Singh, Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Commissioner, Ashwini Bhide, Additional Municipal Commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Siddharth Shirole, Shivajinagar MLA, and others who enlightened the audience on various policy issues.
Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, delivering the keynote address, emphasized the neglect of urbanization and energy requirements by previous governments. He highlighted the shift in focus from rural development to urban policies, given the increasing migration to urban areas for job opportunities.
As people started migrating to urban areas from semi-urban pockets for job opportunities, the economic calculation started going wrong since the previous governments did not have an urban policy in place, a media release said quoting the minister.
"The cumulative spent on urban space by the central government was about Rs 1,57,000 crore between 2004 and 2014. After 2014, we realised the challenges in urbanisation and we saw an opportunity in it," he said.
The current government has increased its urban spending by 11 times, Puri said.
"Today, we are spending about Rs 18 lakh crore for this purpose. This expenditure was necessary because 65 per cent of India's GDP (gross domestic product) comes from the urban population.
Growth vs environment
"Now, we do have a trade-off. Simplistically putting it, can we make one choice between growth or being environmentally conscious? The answer is we have to do both. Which is why the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) had declared an entire year as the Global Housing Technology Challenge Year," he said.
Puri said 87 per cent of India's current fuel requirements are met through imports and the country's rate of growth in fuel demand is three times more than the global average.
"So to deal with this situation we are addressing the trilemma of availability, affordability and sustainability... We have a 3.5 million square kilometres sedimentary basin. We opened up 1 million sedimentary basins which were no-go areas. We opened it up to exploration," he said.
The country has gone from production sharing to revenue sharing contracts with oil exploration companies, he said explaining efforts to tackle India's growing energy requirements.
"We have also gone to the extent of incentivising the finance for exploration," he added.
After the event, Puri inaugurated the first pilot project of making aviation turbine fuel from Alcohol. Sustainable Biofuel (SAF) will be produced in this project in Pirangut near Pune. After the inauguration, Shri Puri, along with other officials inspected the project and expressed satisfaction over the use of state-of-the-art technology in it.
Last year, a flight from Pune to Delhi had completed its journey using aviation fuel made from alcohol. Puri himself had received the aircraft at the Delhi airport.
