Speaking during the joint sitting of parliament on Friday, President Droupadi Murmu also spoke about the key initiatives undertaken by the government to deal with the consequences of climate change. She stressed the government’s proactive role in undertaking a series of measures to mitigate the impacts of climate change, improve agricultural resilience, and enhance water availability, particularly in drought-prone areas.
This is the first time the President has revealed that, in the past 6 months, the government has introduced 109 climate-resilient, biofortified and high-yielding crop varieties to help farmers adapt to changing climate conditions. The new crop varieties that sliced 1.8 billion litres of water off irrigation water use are part of a larger effort to achieve food security, increase agricultural productivity, and buffer against the impacts of climate change. Moreover, the government has brought a ₹2,000 crore ‘Mission Mission’ programme to construct a climate-resistant and weather-ready India. The agricultural community will be greatly supported by the mission to make it more productive in weather forecasting and to help farmers mitigate the impacts of extreme weather events.
The President, while in her speech, especially emphasised the government’s commitment to water security, noting that river interlinking projects have been taken up to ensure they provide essential irrigation and drinking water to drought-affected areas. Based on the vision of the father of the constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the government is working towards executing historic river-linking projects like the Ken Betwa Link Project with an estimated cost of over ₹ 44,000 crore. The benefits of this project are expected to bring millions of people in rural areas of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh out of the age of water scarcity.
Furthermore, President Murmu also spoke about the introduction of the BioE3 Policy under which biomanufacturing has been initiated. It is expected to have an important role in India’s development as an economy based on bioeconomy, the systematic use of natural resources, the reduction of carbon emissions, the provision of new job opportunities, and the promotion of the growth of industries in a sustainable way.
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