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Modi Roams The World In Attempt to Secure India's Energy Supply

IndoCarib

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Exactly six months after taking oath as India’s prime minister and logging state visits to at least eight countries in the period, a pattern has begun to emerge on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign excursions. Foremost on Modi’s travel agenda, it appears, is securing India’s energy supply, a vital ingredient for the country’s economic growth.

This week, Modi has hit Nepal nestling in the Himalayas. There, his government has just overseen an agreement between the Nepalese government and an Indian firm to build a 900 MW hydroelectricity plant that will export three-quarters of its output to India. The $1.04 billion 900 MW Arun III hydropower station is to start producing energy by 2020.

India has come lately into the field in a race for energy resources in the region even as China is exerting energy superiority in nearly all supplying countries. In Nepal, however, the latest deal and the one signed during Modi’s last visit there puts India ahead of China in developing Nepal’s energy industry and securing its own supply.

Modi’s foreign outings have been criticized by his political opponents in India who have taken his official ‘PMO’ Twitter handle to coin a new expansion ‘Prime Minister Overseas’.

Modi has traversed several countries including Japan, Australia and the United States, clearly focusing on India’s rising energy needs, given its own challenges with energy production. In the United States, Modi pitched for a multi-billion dollar push for India’s renewable power sector. A $1 billion loan agreement has been signed between the U.S. Ex-Im Bank and India’s renewable energy agency, IREDA, which will fund sourcing of U.S. equipment for solar projects in India.

Last week in coal-rich Australia, whose largest export India’s power plants desperately need, Modi and Australian prime minister Tony Abbott agreed to expedite approvals for investment in key mining projects. The controversial aspect of the visit was news that India’s largest state-owned bank has agreed to loan $1 billion to port tycoon Gautam Adani (#11 on Forbes list of India’s richest), whose close friendship with Modi is well known, to start a new coal plant in Queensland that will supply coal to India.

In Australia, Modi and Abbott also agreed to speed up arrangements to implement the civil nuclear agreement signed in September that will ensure the supply of Australian uranium for India’s nuclear energy program. An attempt to sign a similar agreement with Japan during Modi’s five-day visit there remained an unfinished job.

In the neighboring Bhutan which he chose for his first official overseas trip in June, Modi pushed for speeding up hydroelectric plants under construction there with Indian government funding. Three projects totaling 3,000 MW are underway and will be operational in the coming two-three years. Electricity is Bhutan’s single largest export and India its largest recipient. Bhutan sandwiched between India and China in the Himalayas has huge untapped potential to generate at least another 24,000 MW of hydropower, making it key to India’s energy security.

Narendra Modi Roams The World In Attempt to Secure India's Energy Supply - Forbes
 
I see a strategic vision in this,securing our long term energy interests. ;)
 
Modi has a vision for India in the wide world. Lesser mortals like Congress leaders cant see beyond Delhi and Pakistan

I hope they are investing more in Thorium reactors & other types of Nuclear energy
Nuclear is the future
 
Modi has a vision for India in the wide world. Lesser mortals like Congress leaders cant see beyond Delhi and Pakistan
Absolutely, these are short term temporary measures to secure energy supply, on the long run we will go to renewable energies and thorium reactors.
Congress will be congress they will try every chance to insult BJP and score brownie points even in every international forum ,meeting.
For them nation doesnt count only their party counts, that is the reason it will go down.Sycophancy has its limits.
 
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