Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in Delhi today that India would have been in tatters today, had Narendra Modi didn’t become the prime minister in 2014. Shah was talking at the national conference on Delivering Democracy: Reviewing two decades of Narendra Modi as Head of Government, organised by Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini to mark the completion of 20 years as head of government by Narendra Modi.
Amit Shah said that when the Constitution of India was written, it was decided that India will be a multi-party democracy. But by the year 2014, people had started to worry that the multi-party democratic system in the country has failed, and the dreams of ram-raj in the country were shattered. “After 1960s and by 2014 people doubted if multi-party democratic system can be successful. People wondered if the system had failed as it didn’t yield fruitful results. With great patience they took a decision and gave power to PM Modi with absolute majority,” Shah said.
He said that Modi became at a time when in the previous govt, every cabinet minister considered themselves to be PMs even though Manmohan Singh was the PM. There was no policy for the country, no one talked about the security of the nation, and even day a new scam had surfaced, he said.
Saying that there was policy paralysis during the UPA govt, he said that it seems that the democratic system of the country will collapse at any time. “Perhaps respect for India was at its lowest, corruption of Rs 12 lakh crores. There were questions on internal security. It seemed our democratic system would collapse any time. At that time BJP decided to field then Gujarat CM as its PM candidate,” Amit Shah said talking about choosing Narendra Modi as the PM candidate ahead of 2014 elections.
Talking about Modi becoming the CM of Gujarat for the first time, Shah said that when BJP had decided in 2001 that Narendra Modi will be the CM Gujarat, it was a rare occasion, because he had no real experience of running administration till then.
The state was reeling under various problems, including the consequences of Kutch earthquake. But as the CM, Narendra Modi brought a lot of changes, and worked a lot on development and transparency.
Amit Shah cited the example of CM Modi promising electricity for 24 hours a day, which everyone thought was impossible. But by separating feeder lines for agriculture from the domestic electricity connections and other reforms, Gujarat had achieved 24-hour power availability, which had led to growth of businesses in the state.
Similarly, the state had 67% school enrolment and the dropout rate was 37%. Modi started the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ programme to promote gender ratio and education in the state, which eventually led to 100% enrolment rate, and the steps were taken to reduce dropout rate to almost zero.
The union home minister added that Gujarat was the first state in India since independence to ensure that the budget allocation for tribals is in accordance with their population size. Such proportionate budget allocation for tribals was done under the VanBandhu Kalyan Yojana.
Talking about the reforms brought by Narendra Modi, Amit Shah said that earlier the Congress PM Rajiv Gandhi had himself said that out of every Rupee spent on public welfare, only 15 paise reached the beneficiaries, and the rest 85 paise was lost in corruption, but PM Modi ended such mass-scale corruption in govt schemes using Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT).
Similarly, the process of procurement by the government has been made corruption-free using the GeM portal. PM Modi also changed the scale and size of projects, Shah said. For example, even earlier it was decided that 10,000 people will be given pucca houses, PM Modi decided that everyone will be given pucca houses by 2022. He said that 2 crore people have been provided houses and by 15 August 2022, every poor in the country will get them.
He also gave the examples of projects to electrify every village, provide toilets to every house etc as examples of mega scales of projects undertaken by Modi govt.
