NaMo asks NRIs to get involved in Indian polity to ensure better governance
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s prognosis that good days were ahead for India has been lapped up by the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to predict the ouster of the Congress in the lok Sabha polls.
Taking a dig at the Prime Minister, Modi said the country will have to wait for six months for good times, implying that the UPA would be out of power by then.
Modi was speaking at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, where a day before at the same venue, Manmohan Singh told the Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) that the “country was heading for better times.”
“Yesterday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that good days are going to come. I agree with the Prime Minister. Good days are ahead for India. I don’t want to say anything more. We should wait for four to six months. But good days are coming,” Modi said, indicating that his party would form the next Government at the Centre after the lok Sabha polls.
This is the first verbal attack on the Prime Minister by Modi after Singh said that “it will be disastrous for the country to have Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister.”
In his speech, Modi slammed the UPA Government for sullying the image of India before the world in the last decade due to rampant corruption, policy paralysis and bad decision-making.
Urging the NRIs to play a larger role in Indian polity, Modi said they should get involved in the forthcoming election process to ensure better governance in future. He reminded the diaspora of the role NRIs played in raising protests across the world against Emergency in the mid-70s.
“Two big incidents occurred in history in which NRIs played a huge role. One was in 1975 during Emergency, when democracy was hit and the entire country was up in arms. Our NRI brothers staged protests across the world against the slaughter of democracy in India.
The second was when, the Vajpayee Government conducted the nuclear test and sanctions were imposed on India. Our NRI brothers and sisters helped India to come out of the sanctions imposed by world powers. I have witnessed these two incidents closely and the third will be the 2014 elections, for which people across the world are eager to contribute,” said Modi.
Saying that NRIs shouldn’t be weighed in Dollars and Pounds, Modi said that the Indian community living in other parts of the world has certain sentiments and time again they have proved their worth.
“Five years later, it will be the 150th year of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary. We should start pondering over this issue now so that we can take our contribution to the world at large during this event. Moreover in 2022, it will be the 75th year of Indian Independence. We should be able to create a new identity of Indian sovereignty in that period,” he said.