Indian Economy To Grow At 8-10 Pct For 15 Years: Arvind Panagariya

As per the advance estimates of Central Statistics Office (CSO), India's economic growth is pegged at 7.4 per cent in 2014-15 while the Reserve Bank of India's recent projection say that GDP growth will accelerate to 7.8 per cent in the current fiscal.

Referring to the challenges on the energy front, Panagariya said, the demand for power, coal, oil will expand rapidly with the country becoming richer.

"Energy demands for India are going to rise as it becomes richer. I expect India's energy demands to grow leaps and bounds as the time goes by," he said.

India needs rapid expansion for the simple reason that one-fourth of the households in the country lack electricity.

The growing consumption of energy, he added, will also create challenges on the environment front.
"At the end of the day India is not the largest polluter, India by any stretch of imagination has not been a mass polluter, much of the responsibility lies with the western countries," he added.

However, there is an important angle from which India needs to promote clean energy and that is purely from the point of view of domestic use, he said.
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