PrintFriendlysjaganathanIn 1985, the youngest Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, during his visit to drought-affected Kalahandi district in Odisha, had said of every rupee spent by the government, only 15 paise reached the intended beneficiary.
Corruption and Leakage were a “Malaise” ailing India post-independence.
29 Years after Rajiv Gandhi made the statement on leakage, came Shri Narendra Damodardas Modi and assumed office as the Fifteenth Prime Minister of India on May 27, 2014.
With close to thirteen years as Chief Minister of Gujarat, and a deep understanding of the grassroot problems faced by Bharat, Shri Narendra Modi was the leader India was waiting for.
Sabka Saath Sabka Vikaas (with everyone for everyone’s prosperity)
PM Modi went about opening bank accounts – Jan Dhan accounts for the unbanked, linking the Aadhaar number (Unique Identity) and Mobile number called as the JAM trinity. In PM Modi’s words –
“JAM vision, will serve as the bedrock of many initiatives to come.
For me, JAM is about Just Achieving Maximum.
Maximum value for every rupee spent.
Maximum empowerment for our poor.
Maximum technology penetration among the masses.”
Not many understood the vision PM Modi had when he rolled out the Jan Dhan Yojna scheme back then. Direct benefit transfer in one stroke eliminated the middlemen standing in between and the beneficiary and the government machinery.
Nuts, Bolts and all the works
- GiveItUp and Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY)
Hon’ble PM launched a nationwide campaign to encourage domestic LPG consumers, who can afford to pay the non-subsidized price for LPG, to voluntarily surrender their LPG subsidy. The objective was to enable the Government to utilize the limited resources to reach out to the real needy – the poor households. As on 1st April, 2023 nearly 1.13 Crore customers have given up LPG subsidy. Simultaneously PM launched Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) on 01.05.2016. The main objective of the scheme is to provide deposit free LPG connections to women from poor households. The Government had set a target of 5 Crore LPG connections to be distributed to the poor households under the scheme. Subsequently, the target was enhanced to 8 Crore, which has been achieved on 7th September 2019, seven months ahead of the target. Also, with targeted subsidy based on income, clean cooking gas is being provided at Rs 450 per cylinder for over 70 lakh (7 million) women.
- Swachh Bharat Mission
PM Modi launched world’s largest sanitation initiative in 2014 to achieve an Open Defecation Free India by October 2, 2019. The programme led to the construction of over 10 crore individual household toilets, taking sanitation coverage from 39% in 2014 to 100% in 2019.
- Mudra Loan Scheme
Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) is a scheme launched by the Hon’ble Prime Minister on April 8, 2015 for providing loans up to Rupees 10 lakh (1 million) to the non-corporate, non-farm small/micro enterprises. This is given to individual entrepreneurs to cater to their funding needs and provide a reference point for the next phase of graduation / growth. Loans amounting to Rs 27.75 lakh crore have been disbursed under the MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) till date and over 47 crore small and new entrepreneurs have benefitted from the scheme.
- Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojna
PM Narendra Modi launched housing for all scheme and identified 1.12 crore (11.2 million) families from the economically weaker sections eligible for this scheme. This scheme has made a mandatory provision for the female head of the family to be the owner or co-owner of the house under this mission. Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs has initiated the Global Housing Technology Challenge – India (GHTC-India) which aims to identify and mainstream a basket of innovative construction technologies from across the globe for housing construction sector that are sustainable, eco-friendly, and disaster-resilient. Out of the 1.12 crore houses sanctioned a total of 81.55 lakh houses have been completed as on date.
- Jal Jeevan Mission – Har Ghar Jal (Tapped water for every home)
In his second term PM Modi set out on another basic requirement – access to clean drinking water. Mission mode execution and scheme delivery has stood out in PM Modi’s governance model. The rural access to piped water in India as of August 15, 2019 was 16.8% and at present it is 75.38%, which has significantly helped in the improvement of the general health of the public.
Modinomics and Upward Mobility
Modinomics – a popular term in recent years to cheer any good news coming in on economic activity in India has gone on to become legendary. Legendary word for a legendary man’s work – architect of New Bharat, Shri Narendra Modi. Modinomics is not freebees or largesse given without accountability. Accountability is the heart of Modinomics. With accountability comes responsibility ensuring corruption free delivery.
As the adage goes – “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” What Honorable Prime Minister has done is nudged citizens to improve their livelihood through honest means, providing opportunities to work, delivering subsidy only to the needy and deserving, thereby, creating upward mobility across all classes of people.
To put things in perspective, the most economically backward class of people, earlier, had to struggle to meet their basic needs like access to sanitation, drinking water, lack of pukka housing and walk miles for collecting firewood for cooking. Now that has all changed. The basics are accessible. Now people have productive time on hand to put themselves to work, develop their skill and earn. Value of honorable living is the greatest aspiration for any human being and that is being facilitated by Modinomics. Skill gaps are being met by Skill India and funding gaps through Mudra and Stand-Up India schemes. All of this has resulted in India bringing down ‘extreme poverty’ below 3 per cent of its population, latest data on the World Poverty Clock showed. A recent discussion paper by NITI Aayog, titled ‘Multidimensional Poverty in India since the year 2005-06’, said that multidimensional poverty has declined sharply from 29.17 per cent in 2013-14 to 11.28 per cent in 2022-23, resulting in 24.82 crores (248.2 million) individuals being pulled out of multidimensional poverty during the 9-year period of Narendra Modi government. According to the latest Brooking’s report “Official data now confirms that India has eliminated extreme poverty, as commonly defined in international comparisons. This is an encouraging development with positive implications for global poverty headcount rates. This also means that time has come for India to graduate to a higher poverty line much like other countries.”
Household air pollution is significantly down thanks to clean cooking gas instead of the toxic firewood. Open defecation too has its health hazards, which have been tackled well thanks to effective scheme delivery.
Development for all has been the single-minded focus of Shri Narendra Modi in the past ten years and the results of which are visible with close to 25 crore people being pulled out of poverty. Holistic approach to poverty alleviation through structural reforms by Shri Narendra Modi has put India right on top. When a fit working class is available to meet the working demands of the economic reforms, Atmanirbhar (self-reliance) becomes a national reality on all parameters. Only a Raja Rishi like Shri Narendra Modi could have envisioned this and execute things to perfection and eradicate poverty and unleash the true potential of Bharat.
||Dharmo Rakshati Rakshitah||