I Did Not Come Into Politics With Any Agenda, Says Union Minister Mahendra Nath Pandey

In an interaction with Urvi Shrivastav, editorial lead, BW CFO, BW Businessworld;  Mahendra Nath Pnadey, Minister of Heavy Industries speaks about his political journey, and work done by the government in the electric vehicle segment. 

You are a postgraduate in journalism and a PhD in Hindi. How did you enter politics?

I did not come into politics with any agenda. When I was a student I started working with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). During this time period, the emergency was declared in the country, and I along with others were vocal in our protests about the same. Due to this, we were imprisoned for six months as well. After our release, the emergency ended, following which I was elected student president at Banaras University. This was a time when people like Vijay Goel, and Rajat Sharma had won elections along with me and my contemporaries in Delhi. Our seniors Arun Jaitley, Mahesh Sharma, Ram Bahadur Rai all served as a guiding light for us. We were deeply influenced by them as students.

Nanaji Deshmukh introduced a new concept of ‘Gram Utthan Prakalp' (raising a village), due to which we worked extensively in villages. Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) came into being around 1980, and we joined it as political worker. It was a natural transition for us, and we did not come with any agenda into politics. As we got into working full-fledged into working for the people, I got elected in Uttar Pradesh as a minister across positions in BJP, under the aegis of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I subsequently assumed the position of union minister.

You have recently inaugurated a school of wielding? What is missing in our tertiary education that we need such a niche institution?

Universities have their own significance which is more academic. In addition, we have IITs that provide technical training and education to students. Our prime minister is of the view that we should have a skilled youth workforce, especially in India. It is the government's vision that Indian youth shine bright globally across sectors. Today we are promoting manufacturing in India and want it to be the global hub of the same. Wielding is a natural process of the same, and wielders are needed at a larger scale today. With Trichi as our base, we have taken baby steps to start our school, where we will train 5000 wielders every year to begin with. We have another school in Varanasi where we will be training 1000 wielders. This will help them get skilled and become employable, and wielders. It is a small step by our ministry in this direction.

The government of India has brought about Faster Adoption And Manufacturing of Vehichles (FAME) India scheme. We have already seen round 1, and round 2 is in the line. How far has this scheme progressed?

FAME 1 was implemented by the Prime Minister in 2015-16 which successfully caught the public eye. We are witnessing a shift towards Electric Vehicles (EV), be it two-wheelers or three-wheelers or commercial vehicles. As soon as the government gauged the success of FAME 1, we multiplied the budget by 10 and implemented FAME 2, with an amount of Rs 10,000 crore. We have received very positive feedback about the same due to our work, for example, in two wheelers we provided a subsidy of 10,000 kW which was necessary for investors as well. We increased it to Rs 15,000 per Kw, which pushed down the cost substantially. Consequently, a bike that was selling at the rate of about 800 pieces per month increased to about 7,000 per month. We have a similar scheme for three-wheelers and four-wheelers at Rs 10,0010 per kW. However, we have placed a cap on that, which is at 20 per cent subsidy of market cost.

We also believe that curbing pollution is the need of the hour. The heavy pollution caused by diesel buses in big cities have to be regulated. We provide 40 per cent subsidy to them, for example, if a bus is worth Rs 2 Cr, Rs 80 Lakh is provided by the ministry of heavy industry. All local transport bodies are in line with the FAME 2 scheme and extremely supportive. With the government's support, we have managed to run 2000 buses across cities, with 3000 more in the pipeline. We plan of brining out 7000 buses across big cities under FAME India scheme.

A major component of FAME is battery manufacturing. We have many issues around it, what is the government doing around this?

In today's world about 80 per cent of Li-ion battery is manufactured by China, about 5 per cent is by Malaysia, the remaining is by the USA, etc. Recognising this fact, the prime minister is taking steps to ensure 50 GW of batteries is manufactured in India. For this we have a Public Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme of 18,100 crore as supporting money. We have surpassed our goals, and the investors we got over claimed over 1 Lakh GW of which 108 GW was found to be perfect. Given our targets, we picked three companies, all formalities were completed and work is in progress. When asked about their future goals in India we came to learn that 75 GW is their own target. This is seminal for a country in India that is not able to produce 1 GW today. We will progress from the position of on importer to an exporter of Lithium batteries.

What about government policies towards EVs? Be it in terms of battery swapping or domestic manufacturing of EVs?

Battery swapping is being looked into by the concerned department which has been announced in the budget as well. My own department is working on fast charging, and we will soon come out with fast charging in a commercial way. However, PLI of Rs 25,800 crore has been provided as a subsidy in which we have two segments. We are also looking to promote domestic manufacturing of products, and have also selected 19 companies as Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) to promote domestic manufacturing of EV products. For component items, we selected 75 companies. I am happy to announce that Rs. 25,900 crore auto worth PLI is being provided for their support. They have themselves provided 75,000 crore investments. This way, the government of India is working actively in two departments of PLI. We have also received an investment of Rs 75 lakh crore from the industry.

What is next in line for the ministry?

FAME 2, auto, and the battery will be our prime focus henceforth, and we will proceed with this. We are also working on fast charging. Additionally, via the capital goods medium for research-oriented goods, we have created many research excellence centers across the country, like IIT Kharagpur, IISc Bangalore, etc. They are working together to come up with globally competitive innovative ideas