Despite being born in a poor family, Prime Minister Narendra Modi never harboured any negativity and transformed his impoverishment into compassion for the needy and strenuously worked for people's welfare, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Thursday.
After becoming the PM in 2014, Modi has changed the lives of crores of poor citizens by providing them various facilities such as houses, toilets, water, gas and electricity connections, medicines at affordable prices and free ration, he noted.
Shah, who is on a Gujarat visit, was addressing a gathering at Modi's hometown Vadnagar in Mehsana district after inaugurating three key projects, including a redeveloped school where the PM received his early education.
"In psychology, it is taught that a child whose childhood is spent in poverty and deprivation is driven by negativity. Such children also develop destructive thinking and grow up with a feeling of revenge. But, Modiji, born in a poor tea-seller's family, transformed his poverty into compassion for the needy people," opined the senior BJP leader.
"When that poor child took over the reins of the state (Gujarat as Chief Minister) and then the country, he never harboured any negativity in his mind. He worked for the welfare of the poor in the entire country to ensure no other child has to face the kind of poverty he faced," said Shah.
The Union minister observed that despite facing adversity in early years of life, only a God-gifted and talented child can think of doing good for the entire society without harbouring any negativity.
Apart from inaugurating the school built in 1888, which has now been redeveloped as "Prerna Complex", Shah also opened an Archaeological Experiential Museum and a sports complex in Vadnagar.
The former BJP president noted that Modi gave top priority to education when he assumed the office of Gujarat Chief Minister in 2001.
"Thanks to his efforts, the school dropout ratio, which was 37 per cent when he took over as CM, came down to just 1 per cent in 2014. He visited every corner of the state as an RSS pracharak (full-time volunteer) to understand the issues being faced by the people of Gujarat. He then resolved all the issues one by one after becoming the CM," he maintained.
Shah recalled that when Modi, during his early political career, used to talk about India's cultural revival and cultural nationalism, BJP workers, including he, used to wonder how this will become a reality.
"Ram Lalla was in a tent for over 500 years. After Modiji became the PM, our dream of a grand temple in Ayodhya has become a reality. Similarly, Jammu and Kashmir truly became an integral part of India after the abrogation of Article 370," emphasised Shah.
He said the people of India for the first time saw a foreign policy having a "spine" under the leadership of PM Modi.
