Madhya Pradesh: 5-year-old boy stuck in borewell dies
Bhopal: A five-year-old boy, who fell into a 200-feet deep borewell in Madhya Pradesh's Niwari district four days back, could not be saved even after a 90-hour-long rescue operation, officials said on Sunday.
As soon as a team of rescue workers managed to retrieve the child, Prahlad, from the borewell around 3 am on Sunday, he was rushed to a hospital where doctors declared him dead, they said.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in a tweet expressed sadness over the boy's death and announced a financial assistance of Rs 5 lakh for his family.
The child, son of farmer Harikishan Kushwaha, fell into the newly-dug borewell at his father's agriculture field in Saitpura (Barahbujurg) village of Niwari district, located about 350 km from here, on Wednesday morning when labourers were putting a pipe casing in it, police said.
He was stuck at a depth of 60-feet in the 200-feet deep borewell and showed no movement since the past three days, Collector Ashish Bhargava said.
Digging machines were used and around 80 rescuers were involved in the nearly 90-hour-long operation, he said.
After being pulled out in the early hours of Sunday, the child was taken to the Niwari district hospital where doctors declared him brought dead, the collector said.
Later, Chief Minister Chouhan in a tweet said, "I am very sad that innocent Prahlad, who fell in the borewell of his agricultural field in Saitpura village of Niwari, could not be saved even after a 90-hour rescue operation."
The team of SDRF (State Disaster Response Force), NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) and other experts worked hard day and night, but the boy was found dead at 3 am on Sunday, Chouhan said and appealed to people to keep their borewells covered.
He also announced that a new borewell will be dug in the agricultural field of the boy's family.
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India should create strategic buffers to navigate 'most difficult' energy shock: CEA Nageswaran
New Delhi (PTI): Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran on Saturday said India needs to create strategic buffers in the face of the "most difficult" energy shock that the country is facing amid the West Asia crisis.
Nageswaran also said the rising prices of fertiliser and petroleum products globally due to the crisis will make it challenging to achieve the 4.3 per cent fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal, while below normal monsoon and pass-through of higher energy prices could lead to "potential inflation spike".
He also said India has employment challenge emanating from AI, and there is a need to ensure that IT sector becomes more competitive and not lose jobs to AI, and instead create jobs that use AI within the IT sector or in other services.
Speaking at the ICPP Growth Conference organised by the Ashoka University, Nageswaran said the current account deficit (CAD) in the current fiscal could rise to over 2 per cent of GDP, from less than 1 per cent in FY'26.
"The ... priority for us is to create strategic buffers. This energy shock is the most difficult one compared to any other previous energy shock in terms of energy lost as a percentage of total global energy supply, not just oil, including gas.
"And we also need to use this occasion to think about other areas where we are vulnerable in terms of import dependence, nickel, tin, and copper. We need to build strategic buffers if we have to make a shot at manufacturing and becoming indispensable," Nageswaran said.
Since the beginning of the war in West Asia on February 28, crude oil prices soared to a four-year high of USD 126 per barrel on Thursday, from about USD 73 level before the war.
Stating that geopolitics will compel policymakers to be nimble and flexible and shed old model of thinking, Nageswaran said India is better prepared than many other countries to deal with the crisis because of the fiscal leeway that the country has due to lowering of fiscal deficit ratio to 4.4 per cent of GDP in FY'26.
Nageswaran said the West Asia conflict is more of a price shock than supply shock for India as the government is managing the supply side deftly.
"This particular conflict, which is going to be on a low simmer or a high flame situation, whatever it is, it is going to be there with us in some form or the other because the military conflict may be over, but the strategic conflict is well and truly alive. It will be so for some time," Nageswaran said.
He said the conflict has four channels of shock: price and supply shock, trade impact, sticky logistics costs and remittance shock.
India imports 60 per cent of its LPG usage and of that, 90 per cent flows through the now closed Strait of Hormuz.
Nageswaran said the pass-through of high global energy prices would have to be a "balancing act". He said some pass-through is already happening in commercial LPG, and the levy of export duty on diesel and ATF.
The government has cut excise duty on petrol and diesel to shield customers from the impact of the rise in petroleum prices. "We are coming around to arriving at a certain modus vivendi with respect to burden-sharing between the fiscal policy side, inflation, households and the oil marketing companies. So it has to be a balancing act," Nageswaran said.
