The Narendra Modi government has empowered women, farmers and marginalised sections of society by taking various measures for them, while others only talked about doing so, BJP president and Union Minister J P Nadda said on Sunday.
From putting the country on the path of economic progress to lifting 25 crore people above the poverty line, the government under PM ’s leadership has launched varioius welfare schemes for all sections, drawing inspiration from Jana Sangh ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya’s idea of “integral humanism”, Nadda said.
The chief was addressing the valedictory session of a two-day conclave to commemorate 60 years of Upadhyaya’s lectures on integral humanism.
“Our traditions were not created in two days; they are a result of experiences of thousands of years,” he said, stressing the need to expound Indian economic thought.
Nadda said that India as a country of 140 crore people cannot be centralised. “We have to be a decentralised system,” he said.
“World standards cannot be the standards we have to adhere to; we have to have our Indian standards,” he said. He said this might not have seemed possible in Upadhyaya’s time, but under PM Modi’s leadership every parameter was being prepared around Indian standards.
He said Upadhyaya at that time advocated “swadeshi” and India could say today that self-reliance is the order of the times. “We were even purchasing idols of Ganesh ji from China. Today, we are third in the toy industry,” Nadda said. “We are also third in the automobile market.”
He said that India had made strides in defence production too. “We witnessed the success of Operation Sindoor and that of the BrahMos (missiles) as well. Our defence production has reached `1.3 crore,” he said.
Under PM Modi, India had established an economic model aligning ‘integral humanism; with ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’, he said. Recalling Upadhyaya’s message that the economy was not assessed from the person on the top of the ladder but the one at its bottom, Nadda said, “We have taken inspiration from his Antyodaya concept (uplifting the poorest).”
Nadda underlined that Upadhyaya was the inspiration for the free gas cylinder scheme — PM Ujjwala Yojana — for women. He said Swachh Bharat Mission and welfare schemes for farmers launched by the PM were also inspired by Upadhyaya.
He said the government has provided cooking gas connections to more than 10 crore households, constructed 12 crore toilets and built four crore pukka houses. There is a need to understand how the government under Modi’s leadership has empowered women, farmers and the marginalised sections of society, and brought them into the mainstream, he said.
With PTI inputs
