NEW DELHI: HIV/Aids and potential water shortages pose the biggest risks to India’s economic future, Finance Minister P Chidambaram told an international economic forum yesterday. India already has the world’s highest HIV/Aids caseload, with 5.7mn people living with the virus. The problem with "the most frightening potential to get out of hand (in India) is HIV/Aids," Chidambaram told the India Economic Summit, which drew industrialists and business figures from India and around the world.
"We must be more open about sex," Chidambaram said at the opening of the three-day summit organised by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum.
The meeting was exploring the most significant threats to the future of India’s fast-growing economy, currently expanding at an annual rate of over 8%.
"I think we are ducking the issue (on HIV/Aids)," the minister said.
He added that until two or three years ago India’s government "was in denial mode" over the issue of HIV in a country known for its traditionally prudish attitudes toward sex.
Chidambaram’s statement came after the United Nations HIV-prevention body warned this month that under a worst-case scenario, the virus could spread to 3% of India’s population of more than 1bn in the next decade.
India’s current infection rate is 0.9%.
India’s government recently set out a new HIV strategy, under which it will spend $2.5bn over the next five years on prevention and treatment.
Water shortages posed the second-biggest threat to India’s economic outlook, the minister said.
Indian "states are already nearly at war with each other over water", he said, referring to frequent bitter rows among states that erupt over sharing of water resources.
Some of the potential shortages could be tackled through desalination of water drawn from along India’s coasts, as well as through recycling and more efficient management of water resources, he said.
"New efficient irrigation systems are needed," he said.
But if India tackled its water problems effectively its "precipitation is sufficient to meet its water needs," he added.
But he said interlinking of rivers to resolve the water woes would affect India’s ecology.
"Somehow we tend to see interlinking of rivers as the only solution for the water problem that India faces today. It has got nothing to do with the political problems between the states," the minister said.
"It is not possible to link all the rivers due to geographical and technological obstacles. The study itself will cost almost $50mn and it will take three years," Chidambaram said.
An ambitous proposal to interlink the country’s rivers was mooted during the previous government of prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, but could not be taken up as it faced opposition from several quarters.
Bangladesh too objected, as it feared depletion of its own water resources.
But Chidambaram said there was no need for alarm. "Every risk is an opportunity for innovation and change. It gives the impetus for technological change, an opportunity to move ahead at a swifter pace." – Agencies |
