lashing out at the previous Congress-led Governments for not focussing on development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a public meeting in Ballia on Sunday that most of their policies had been made keeping in mind the ballot box and not for development or alleviation of poverty of the country.
“Now our Government is working for the uplift of the poverty-stricken people through people’s participation,” Modi said, while launching the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana’ scheme which aims at providing 5-crore free-cooking gas (lPG) connections to below-poverty-line (BPl) families over the next three years.
“Uttar Pradesh has given so many Prime Ministers, but the poverty levels still go on increasing. There were some drawbacks in these policies,” he asked.
Recalling that a Member of Parliament (MP) from Ghazipur in UP had raised the issue of abject poverty in eastern UP during the Prime Ministership of Jawaharlal Nehru, Modi said a commission was formed which made several major recommendations. He said, “What happened to those recommendations, only God knows. Fifty years have passed since then. One of the recommendations was to connect Ghazipur and Mau by rail. I can now say with immense satisfaction that we made a decision on Budget allocation for Tarighat-Ghazipur-Mau rail line. We have now decided to construct a rail line to implement that recommendation.”
Speaking on the significance of May Day, the Prime Minister said the new ‘Mantra’ should be — “labourers, unite the world” as against “Workers of the World, Unite”, the slogan which used to be raised earlier. “The situation has changed. The biggest cementing factor is the sweat of the workers who can unite the world,” he said, noting that those who used to raise slogans of uniting the workers have been “losing ground the world over”.
The Prime Minister recalled that Ballia is the land of the revolutionary Mangal Pandey, and said that while the development of eastern Uttar Pradesh has suffered for decades, connectivity is now being strengthened in the region. He said the Union Government is allocating tremendous resources for the development of Uttar Pradesh. He mentioned the rapid progress that has been made in rural electrification and the fruits of development must reach the eastern part of India. “For us to gain strength is the fight against poverty,” he added.
The Prime Minister said that his visit to Ballia to launch the Ujjwal Yojana had nothing to do with the Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh due next year. “We have not come here to sound the poll bugle. That is for the people to do,” he said.
Modi said he had visited Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh to announce such schemes where no elections were to be held. “I went to Haryana to launch the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padao’ scheme... As the male-female ratio there had dipped,” he said.
“I chose Ballia to launch the Ujjwala Yojana because there were very few people with gas connection here. Eight out of 100 families have gas connection here,” he said, adding that the eastern part of India -- from eastern UP and Bihar to Assam, the Northeast, West Bengal and Odisha, has to be developed to root out poverty from the country.
Modi said earlier the MPs used to get 25 gas connection coupons to be distributed in their constituencies each year and there were reports that some used to sell these coupons.
“But, now I want to provide gas connections to five crore families by 2019 when we would celebrate 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi,” the Prime Minister said.
Maintaining that 1.10 crore families have given up lPG subsidies, he said in all these years, only 13 crore families across the country had gas connection and added that his Government has given three crore connections in one year itself.
Modi said his Government has made several changes in the labour laws and labour relations to provide social security to millions of workers across the country.
He said the minimum guaranteed pension now has risen to Rs 1,000 per month, compared to a meagre Rs 15 or Rs 100 earlier. Similarly, positive changes have been made in laws or rules relating to bonus and provident fund, he said.
labour laws have been rationalised and a labour Identity Number is now being given to the workers to ensure their social security, besides insurance, healthcare and pension to construction workers, the Prime Minister said.