US eager to assist India ‘leapfrog dirty technology’

New Delhi: At a time when India is battling to strike a balance between its development agendas and environmental challenges, US President Barack Obama's revelation that Washington was eager to provide technological assistance to New Delhi to "leapfrog over dirty technologies" comes as a pleasant surprise.

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi ascended the Chair in New Delhi, India's development goals got a huge boost. However, India faced stiff challenges to cut down on pollution while meeting its development goals.

"It is in our interest to help them (India) develop. Because they're not going to say, okay, we're just going to stay poor — they're going to want cars and refrigerators and air conditioning, just like we have," Obama said in an interview.

Obama made it clear that the technologies that USA wants to give to India would help the country to achieve its goal in a cleaner way.

"We do that not out of charity; we do it because — here's one thing you can't do. You can't build a wall to the atmosphere. You can't build a border wall when it comes to carbon emissions or global temperatures or the oceans," Obama said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had repeatedly claimed that India was a victim of global warming.

It was evident during the rule of the Manmohan Singh led UPA government that development projects took a backseat with first world nations showing reluctance to provide high-end environment friendly technologies and financial assistance.

Barack Obama also underscored the need for the developed nations to focus on providing financial assistance to developing nations and ensure that it was used in an environment friendly atmosphere.

"And this is in our interest. Keep in mind that — let's take a country like India that's got over a billion people," Obama added.

(With inputs from agencies)