(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Says Planning Commission will be replaced by new body soon googletag.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) delivers a speech to mark the country's 68th Independence Day at the Red Fort in New Delhi.- AFP
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced a slew of schemes for financial inclusion development of model villages cleanliness and sanitation and said the country’s Planning Commission would soon be replaced by a new institution that would be more in tune with the needs of the times.In his address to the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort once the seat of the country’s erstwhile Mughal rulers Modi also urged the people to shun evil practices such as female foeticide and give up the path of violence communalism and casteism and to work unitedly for the prosperity of the nation.
This was Modi’s maiden address from the historic venue after assuming office on May 26 and he used the opportunity to repeatedly remind the people of their own duties to the country and underlined the need for each one of India’s 1.25 billion people to pitch in with his or her mite in the task of nation-building.
The Jan Dhan Yojana scheme announced by Modi is aimed at ensuring the financial inclusion of the poorest of the poor in the country. Under it all the poor families would have a bank account and be given a debit card. They will also be provided with an insurance cover of Rs 100000 to cope with any medical or other emergencies.
Under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana each Member of Parliament (MP) will chose and develop a small village in his constituency as a model village with proper facilities of education health cleanliness sanitation and so on over a period of one year. The blueprint for the scheme will be announced on October 11 the birth anniversary of Jayaprakash Narayan the well-known social reformer and political leader who had led the “total revolution” movement against then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the mid-1970s.
Modi said he would urge state governments to also join the effort and encourage members of their state legislative assemblies to similarly develop model villages in their constituencies. “If we have to build the nation we have to start from the villages” he stressed.
He said the Planning Commission was set up decades ago to meet the needs of that time and had acquitted itself well in its assigned role. But he felt the times had changed and so had India’s internal and external circumstances. He said the Central government had an increasingly lesser role in economic activities and the roles of the private sector and state governments had correspondingly increased.
He said the need of the hour was to strengthen the federal structure of the country and enable the creation of a Prime Minister-Chief Ministers team that would take the country forward. The new body would boost creative thinking encourage public-private partnership (PPP) ensure optimal use of resources utilise the energy of the country’s youth and strengthen the federal structure.
Modi also announced the launch of a Clean India Campaign in the 150th birth anniversary year of Mahatma Gandhi the father of the nation beginning October 2 and called for a nationwide effort by all concerned to ensure that every school had toilets including separate facilities for girls in the next one year. He urged the corporate sector to pitch in this effort as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. He said MPs should spend their MP Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds for such purposes.
He said it was a matter of shame that in this day and age and despite all the progress the country had made in so many spheres millions of Indians still had to defecate in the open because of the lack of toilets.
Thousands of people including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Congress President Sonia Gandhi Cabinet Ministers political leaders senior officials diplomats and schoolchildren had gathered for the event.
Both at the beginning and the end of his speech he emphasized that he was standing before the people not as a Pradhan Mantri (Prime Minister) but as a Pradhan Sevak (Prime Servant). He said it was a tribute to the strength of Indian democracy that a person like him from a humble family from a small town had got the chance to unfurl the national tricolour from the Red Fort in Delhi.
He said his government would not bulldoze its way on the basis of its majority in the Lok Sabha but on the basis of consensus among all parties including the Opposition.
He expressed anguish over the growing number of incidents of violence against women and said the nation’s head hung in shame over the cases of rape and sexual assaults against women being reported every day.
He underlined the need to end the gender bias against women and girls and called for an immediate end to the practice of female foeticide. He said such practices had skewed India’s sex ratio to just 940 girls for every 1000 boys.
Modi also reminded parents of the need to monitor the activities and habits of their sons just as they did in the case of their daughters to ensure that they did not fall into bad company and go astray. He said it was lack of such parental supervision and guidance that often led youths to a life of crime or to terrorist or extremist activities.
He underlined the need to boost India’s manufacturing economy to create more jobs and invited foreign investors to “make in India”. Similarly he said people at home especially the youth must try and give a boost to the “Made in India” label.
Modi spoke in glowing terms of the contribution made by the IT sector to India’s shining image in the world and underlined the need to encourage manufacturing of electronic products in the country.
He said that as an outside who had got a chance to see the workings of the Indian government from the inside now he was saddened by the manner in which it functioned with many power centres and groups trying to protect their turfs and undermining the others. He said it was sad that many government departments were involved in legal disputes with other departments.
Modi said it was time for everyone in government and outside to put such differences aside and work as one team in the task of nation-building not as an “assembled entity” but an “organic entity”. He said the time had come for the people to put aside their communal casteist and other divides and work unitedly to put the country firmly on the path to prosperity.
He stressed the need for good governance development skills training and growth of sectors like tourism. Calling for a Digital India he said there was need to move towards mobile governance and to provide facilities such as broadband connectivity long distance education and telemedicine to India’s remote villages.
“We must move towards e-governance—easy effective and economical governance” he said.
Modi also urged the people to wage a war against poverty and eliminate it just as the nation’s founding fathers had stood together and fought for freedom and won it. “Can we not wage a war and emerge victorious against poverty Let us defeat poverty” he added. For more news from Khaleej Times follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes and on Twitter at khaleejtimes Follow khaleejtimes ->
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