New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said only national service can save the nation, and not politics. Politics, he said, only focuses on what resources the government has and how and to whom it should be distributed. “If I say that the previous governments are responsible for homelessness, am I wrong? I seek a house for the poor, electricity, toilets, education for kids. Are the poor not entitled to these? The money we save goes into benefiting the poor,” Prime Minister Modi at a workshop for BJP lawmakers, where he highlighted the various pro-poor programmes of his government.
“We will establish more hospitals than previous governments. Why am I insistent on building toilets? It is for our mothers and sisters,” he added. Prime Minister Modi also talked about the Centre’s ‘Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao’ initiative. “In the ‘Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao’ whose daughters are we educating? These are the girls of minorities and the poor, who are deprived of education and their rights. If my Muslim daughters are uneducated, our country cannot develop,” he said. “I am the Prime Minister, and as Prime Minister, I demand something – Beti Bachao – no more female foeticide,” he added.
The Prime Minister also reiterated his demand for the well-off sections of society to give up their gas subsidies. “I urge you to please give up your gas subsidy. We save 200 crore rupees if 4 lakh people give up their subsidy. This money will not go into the government’s treasury. This money will go towards providing gas cylinders to the poor people,” he said. “We will save the forests. If one crore people give up their subsidies, one crore poor people will move from wood burning chulhas to gas stoves,” he added.
Prime Minister Modi also discussed about the success of his government’s ‘Jan Dhan Yojana’. “I salute the banks, who have made the Jan Dhan Yojana a success. Students were not being granted loans. We have made provisions so that students will not be hassled because of the paucity of funds,” Prime Minister Modi said. “The neo-middle classes are the most ambitious. They do not want to go to the jhopdis (huts).
They (the poor) may not be able to sit on par with the rich, but they want to live with dignity. We want to increase the purchasing power in the villages. But the money spent should not be unproductive,” he added.
