UN officials express awe over India's progress in achieving SDGs

India has said it is committed to accelerating economic growth beyond seven per cent over the next five years while ensuring there is no trade-off between sustainability and development, as top UN officials expressed "awe" over the country's remarkable progress in moving towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals.

Addressing the High Level Political Forum 2019 special event 'From Commitment to Achievement: India's Experience in Localising the SDGs' at the UN Headquarters, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar said India at the moment is at the "cusp of a major transformation" and the government has ensured that inclusion will be a part of it.

"In the next five years, we are now committed to accelerate growth in India beyond the 7 per cent that we have achieved. We know that to meet our young people's aspirations, we have to grow at higher rates, keeping in mind clearly the constraints that we have," Kumar said.

"Then the fruits of this growth will reach to the people that we are supposed to reach, who are looking for better education, better health, better delivery of electricity, renewable power," he said Tuesday.

"Now we are going to try and accelerate our growth in the next two decades" so that India emerges as a country by 2030, which has achieved a large part, if not all, of the SDGs and some before the target date, he said.

He underscored that in the last five years, the Narendra Modi government has "refused to believe that sustainability and development are a trade-off.

Acknowledging that there are still "huge and immense challenges" for the diverse and 1.3 billion strong country, Kumar said the government is taking up any challenge knowing that "this is the hand that has been dealt to us and we have to make sure that we reduce the carbon imprint, improve our water ways and yet have the development of the last decile of the population - summed up in Antyodaya."
Steiner added that the Aadhaar programme has delivered so much more than anyone else could have thought possible that "I sometimes still wonder why the world has not sat up and studied this more because it is transformative in the true sense of the word."