Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday took a sly dig as he spoke on reimagination at ET Global Business Summit 2023 and asked whether the theme of reimagination is applicable to opinion-makers of the country as well. “Most of the opinion-makers remain busy launching and relaunching and re-relaunching the same product every six months. And in this re-launch, they don’t even reimagine,” PM Modi said with a chuckle as he added: ‘Kaafi samajhdar log hain baithe (many intelligent people are sitting in the audience).
“Whatever, the theme is very relevant for today. because when we were given the power in 2014, our first work was to reimagine. In 2014, there were scams of thousands of crores. Policy paralysis, bhai-bhatijabad plagued the country. It was difficult for the country to progress at that time. So we thought we would reimagine and recreate every element of the governance,” PM Modi said.
“Some people used to talk about garibi hatao but the truth is that the poor were considered a burden to the country. The poor were left on their own. But our approach was to empower the poor. Four decades ago, then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi when the government released 1 rupee from Delhi only 15 paise reached the beneficiary. Don’t know how that happened. Our government so far transferred ₹28 lakh crore in various welfare schemes,” PM Modi said.
“Now if I apply Rajiv Gandhi’s words to today’s situation, then it means 85% — ₹24 lakh crore would have been siphoned off and only ₹4 lakh crore would have reached the beneficiary. But since I reimagined, today when we release ₹1 from Delhi, the entire amount reaches the beneficiary,” PM Modi said.
Moving on from Rajiv Gandhi, PM Modi referred to Jawaharlal Nehru and said: “Nehru ji once said the day when every Indian will have the toilet facility, India will achieve a milestone. This means Nehru ji too was aware of the problem, but there was no eagerness to find a solution. And that’s why the majority of the country remained deprived of the basic facilities,” PM Modi said.