As Union minister for housing and concrete affairs and petroleum & pure fuel with Cabinet rank, diplomat-turned-politician Hardeep Singh Puri is on the helm of departments and ministries that play a crucial function in influencing India’s development story.
As a diplomat and a former Union minister for civil aviation, Puri — the visitor at Express Adda on Friday — was one of many 4 Cabinet ministers tasked with coordinating the federal government’s large efforts in direction of evacuating Indian college students stranded in Ukraine after Russia attacked the previous on February 24.
In his function as minister for petroleum & pure fuel, Puri is entrusted with the duty of accelerating home manufacturing of crude oil and pure fuel, alongside producing a gas-based economic system that entails a renewed give attention to enhancing the provision and utilisation of the cleaner fossil gasoline.
With the latest reduce in excise obligation on petrol and diesel, and the federal government’s intervention in guaranteeing the addition of sanction-hit Russia’s deeply discounted crude oil into its general provide basket, the minister has his work reduce out in guaranteeing that the affect of spiralling international gasoline costs is as transitory as attainable, given the spiralling inflationary development.
Retail or Consumer Price Index-based inflation has remained over the Reserve Bank of India’s higher band of 6% for 5 months in a row, prompting the central financial institution to hike coverage charges and kill no matter little demand the economic system has seen as India emerges out of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As Union housing & city affairs minister, Puri has an overarching mandate over the event of city infrastructure, at a time when there’s immense stress on the infrastructure of most Indian cities and cities, together with water provide assets, sanitation, the housing-for-all goal, and in addition the duty of leveraging using information, know-how and innovation within the planning and administration of cities.
A 1974 batch Indian Foreign Service officer, Puri additionally served because the everlasting consultant of India to the United Nations between 2009 until 2013, forward of becoming a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014.
As a part of his city re-engineering mandate, Puri is in control of the Narendra Modi authorities’s key flagship schemes such because the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana — Urban (PMAY-U), Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana and the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, amongst others. His ministry additionally oversees the formidable Central Vista Redevelopment Project aimed to reshape India’s seat of energy at Raisina Hill.
At the Express Adda, Puri can be in dialog with Anant Goenka, govt director, The Indian Express Group, and P Vaidyanathan Iyer, govt editor, The Indian Express.
The Express Adda is a sequence of casual interactions organised by The Indian Express Group and options these on the centre of change. When the discussions moved on-line through the Covid-19 pandemic, Union minister for exterior affairs S Jaishankar, Union minister for street transport and highways and MSMEs Nitin Gadkari, Union minister for schooling Ramesh Pokhriyal, AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria, and former chief financial adviser Arvind Subramanian had been among the many company at e-Adda.
Prominent company at previous editions of the Express Adda embody Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, and cricketer Cheteshwar Pujara.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”