New Delhi, May 17 -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while delivering a speech at a community event at The Hague in Netherlands, warned that a huge section of the world's population will be pushed back into poverty if the war in West Asia is not rapidly stopped.

"The world is dealing with new challenges," he said, as he addressed the Indian diaspora in the Netherlands during the second leg of his five-nation European tour.

"First came the corona(virus) pandemic; then wars began to break out, and now there is an energy crisis. This decade is turning into a decade of disasters for the world," PM Modi explained in Hindi.

He issued a pointed warning about the consequences of inaction. If the cascading effect of these crises are not immediate...