Border security has many dimensions, including sealing the porosity that permits drugs, fake currency, arms, and infiltrators to enter the country, Narendra Modi thundered at a gargantuan Fateh Rally organised by the youth wings of the BJP and Akali Dal at Jagraon in Ludhiana district of Punjab on Sunday. The Union Defence Ministry, he asserted, has a special responsibility in this regard as drugs are ruining the lives of our youth, plunging their families into despair; the jawans and officers posted at the border should be held accountable for this cross-border trade. Adding that the integrity of the borders must be protected at all costs, he accused the Union Government of complacency on this critical front.
Punjab being a traditional recruiting ground of the Armed forces like Haryana where he first raised the issue of One Rank One Pension, the Gujarat Chief Minister condemned the UPA for repeatedly announcing the measure and never fulfilling it. Had the Centre been sincere, he said, it could have implemented this decision in any of the 10 budgets from 2004 to 2014; instead it has tried to fool the people once again by ‘accepting’ the demand and not making adequate budgetary provision for it, thus negating it by the backdoor.
Reiterating the BJP’s commitment to this long pending demand of military veterans, Narendra Modi said he had vigorously supported it at Rewari (Haryana) and that Atal ji would have done it if BJP had returned to power in 2004. He promised to implement it if the BJP came to power in the coming general election, “only desh bhaktas can do it, and so we will do it”. Lauding the valour of the Punjab where virtually every village and every family has given jawans to the nation, he said Congress is habituated to throwing dust in the eyes of the people, but now people have become alert, “so now in Parliament they have started throwing chili in one’s eyes” (an allusion to the Gandhi family loyalties of the perpetrator).
Appreciating the balanced growth model in Punjab, where Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal focuses upon the welfare of farmers and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal promotes industry, the Gujarat strongman said this model can be implemented across the nation. As part of this twin model, the Punjab Government recently invited top industrialists to invest in the State, and also organised a massive Krushi Mela to promote the modernisation of agriculture. Narendra Modi mooted his three-fold model of development, wherein one-third of the economy should comprise of agriculture, the manufacturing should comprise another one-third, and the service sector should make up the rest. The service sector requires less investment and brings greater return, he said, and it should embrace the tourism sector where a business potential of $3trillion is waiting to be harvested.
In agriculture, he mused, the need of the hour is the use of technology to increase yields per acre as land is a fixed commodity, while families increase in size and holdings get fragmented. One solution is value addition of agricultural produce, for instance, from tomato to ketchup, and this calls for branding and marketing, which endeavours should be supported by the State.
Far from working to augment the income of farmers, the Government of India, he charged, announces the minimum support price for food grains, but this remains on paper only, and large amounts of the farmers’ produce rots without proper storage. Seeing this dismal situation, the Supreme Court had advised the UPA to distribute the inadequately stored grain among the poor, but the Centre ignored the suggestion and instead sold the rotting grain to alcohol manufacturers at throwaway prices; “this is an insult to the poor”, he said.
An effective food grain policy, he said, calls for splitting the Food Corporation of India into three parts, one each devoted to the business of procurement, the preservation of the procured grain, and distribution. This is the only way to ensure that new warehouses are built and grain purchased on time and stored scientifically, and distributed properly. The NDA, he said, is committed to ending the corruption and deceit that pervades governance today; “vikas is our agenda” and the NDA is a National Development Alliance, he added. The Congress on the other hand, makes wild allegations against other parties, when the truth is that from A to Z, one can count the Congress saga of scams, such as Adarsh, Bofors, Coal, “Congress brashtachar ki pehchaan ban gayi hai”. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, ruling at a time when the party dominated virtually the entire political spectrum, said that every rupee sent by the Centre became 15 paise by the time it reached the village, but we must ask “which hand, panja, touched the rupee to reduce it to 15 paise”.
Kutch, he reminisced, was a desert without water, but when Sikh farmers came there, to Lakhpat region, they made the desert bloom with their efforts. Denouncing a rumour that Sikh farmers were unwelcome in Gujarat, he said that all Indian citizens have the same rights in Gujarat, and indeed in the whole country, and the Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had ascertained the truth for himself when he came to inaugurate the Krishi Mahotsav. The Gujarat-Punjab ties, he recalled, go back to the time of the first Panj Piara’s, where one of the Panj Piara’s was a tailor from Gujarat; this amounts to a blood relationship, he insisted, “adarshon ka rishta bana hua hai”. Guru Nanak had come to Gujarat and his padukas were preserved in the Lakhpat Gurdwara in Kutch, and worshipped to this day. Unfortunately the Gurdwara was destroyed during the Bhuj earthquake, but the Gujarat Government called outside experts to restore it to its original glory, “it is our human heritage, it is a global heritage today”.
The Sikh and Gujarati communities can be found everywhere in the world because they are enterprising. The Hindu-Sikh unity is upsetting the Congress ploy of divide and rule; that is how Punjab shunned the formula of alternating Akali and Congress rule and gave Parkash Singh Badal a second consecutive term.
Thanking the Punjab farmers for their contributions of iron for Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s Statue of Unity, a movement which began with the Chief Minister’s own village, Narendra Modi observed that it was Parkash Singh Badal who recalled the sterling contributions of Lala Lajpat Rai, who hailed with Ludhiana, whereas the Congress ignores all freedom fighters but for one family. He expressed appreciation for the great political leaders like Badal, Devi Lal and Farooq Abdullah, with whom he had interacted as a party leader, which lessons helped him when entrusted with the political responsibility for Gujarat. Should he become the Prime Minister, he promised, “I will be Prime Minister formally, but I will be as a chowkidar and will not let anyone loot the national treasury. This money must be used for the welfare of the poor.” Alluding to the turban gifted to him, he said, “Main is padgi ki izzat rakhoonga’
Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said that Punjab has no grouse for the injustices heaped upon the Gurus and the people by the Islamic rulers in the medieval era or by the British rulers later, but the massacre of innocents by our own government in 1984 is something we cannot get over. Appreciating former Prime Minister Atal ji for giving the State a refinery when other Governments ignored the State, he said Punjab has made sacrifices throughout history for the defence of India and had lived through an era of extremism also. Accusing the Congress of undue hostility, he predicted that the party would lose badly in the elections, and its top leaders could also lose their own seats as happened in 1977. “Where is Rahul Gandhi and where is Modi? Running the Government is not a joke. Congress doesn’t have the guts to declare its Prime Ministerial candidate,” he said, emphatically dismissing the Congress as of no future relevance.
BJP president Rajnath Singh derided Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for talking about bringing strong laws to counter corruption amidst the rampaging corruption in the 10 years of UPA rule at the Centre. Wondering why corruption always escalates when the Congress is in power, he said one cannot expect a cat to guard the household’s milk. He promised to help the State in the “drug war” unleashed by Pakistan. The BJP would also set up an exclusive Kisan Channel to give farmers up-to-date information on agricultural issues, and would help in the matter of farm loans. He appreciated the Akali Dal and Parkash Singh Badal for being the first to suggest that Narendra Modi should be the NDA’s Prime Ministerial candidate.
Niticentral.com, 23 February 2014
http://www.niticentral.com/2014/02/23/border-security-has-many-dimensions-modi-192791.html