Indirectly alluding to the recent resignation of American ambassador Nancy Powell to pave the way for a reset in Indo-US ties, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial contender Narendra Modi said that with a strong leader and a stable government, even “foreign countries behave and want to be friends”. America and other nations, he added, know that India is going to get a strong government, and they accept it, he said while continuing his marathon Bharat Vijay Rally across Jharkhand and Bihar on Wednesday.
Reiterating his plea for a strong Government at the Centre, and not just a BJP Government led by him, Narendra Modi said that to overcome the deficiencies of the past 60 years, he needed a minimum of 300 seats to keep the bureaucrats and the thekedars (middlemen) in line and make files come to life, and above all, to enjoy status on the international plane.
Narendra Modi berated the plunder of Jharkhand’s rich natural resources and condemned the State Government for not bothering to undertake value addition of the mineral wealth to enrich the State to improve the lives of the people. Bewitching his audience with knowledge of the rich mica mines (abrakh khadaan) in Koderma district, Narendra Modi said that the State Government has turned a blind eye to the open loot of natural resources (kaccha maal) when a little value addition could bring a rain of wealth upon the region. But when locals forage for small pieces of mica to sell in the market for a living, they are harassed for bribes (hafta).
Mica is a valuable mineral with multiple uses, from being a medicinal item in Ayurveda to an industrial raw material in the electrical and electronics industries on account of its insulating properties. India is a major producer of mica with rich deposits in Jharkhand, Bihar, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.
The Congress shehzade, he said to thunderous applause from the huge gathering, says that the country does not need one chowkidar (a dig at the Gujarat Chief Minister) but needs 125 crore watchmen. “But let me remind the shehzade that his father Rajiv Gandhi, as Prime Minister of India at a time when the Congress ruled from panchayat to Parliament and there was no trace of the BJP, said that when Re 1 comes out of the Centre, it becomes 15 paise in the village”, he retorted.
Escalating his attack on his main rival, the Gujarat veteran said that the electoral pacts made by the Congress showed the true state of its commitment on the issue of corruption. “The Congress thekedar,” he mocked, include “the just-out-of-jail chaara chori karne wale Lalu ji (former Chief Minister of Bihar), the ‘adarsh’ Ashok Chavan (former Chief Minister of Maharashtra); can people trust them?” Challenging Congress to say if such persons were going to save the country, Narendra Modi taunted, “Never before have I see a cat given the job of protecting the milk!”
Cleverly nixing allegations that he intends to concentrate all power, Narendra Modi said that one man cannot run such a large country as India, but the combined brains of 125 crore people can do it through a system of shared responsibility (jan bhagidari). Hitting back at the Congress president without naming her, the BJP leader said that for some persons, elections are just a means to grab power, but victory is a very “small definition of democracy; the real meaning is how to include 125 crore people in the task of development so that progress becomes automatic”.
Among Congress leaders, he said in a direct dig at the dynasty, only Lal Bahadur Shastri trusted people and unleashed their energy. Thus, when the country faced a crisis of food grains and survived on imported food, his ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’ call galvanised the farmer to achieve self sufficiency in food. “Can farming be done in Government files or offices or minds?” he asked rhetorically to the highly responsive crowd, and answered, “it can only be done in fields, so we must make the farmer strong, only the Government never realises this”.
Accusing the Centre of failure to link the research in the agricultural universities with farmers in the fields, he said it was disgraceful that grains produced by farmers with the sweat of their brow were allowed to rot for the benefit of alcohol producers, and adequate storages were not built. The topsy turvy policies of the State and Central Governments, he charged, had made life impossible and were responsible for the out-migration of youth.
Later at Nawada, Narendra Modi told an exuberant gathering that Bihar is anxious to get out of its stagnation and reflects the mood of the nation in this respect. Lauding the bravery of the people who stayed put in the grounds as bombs exploded at his rally in Patna on October 27, 2013 while the State Government slept, the Gujarat strongman reminded them that he came from the land of Dwarka and has a relationship with the Yadu-vansh (clan) of Sri Krishna.
Condemning the large scale slaughter of animals under the UPA sponsored Pink Revolution, Narendra Modi asked the cow-loving State if Lalu ji (former Chief Minister) supported this ‘Gulabi Kranti’. In the name of mutton exports and mutton subsidies, he said, whole villages are being denuded of their animal wealth, animals are stolen and sent to Bangladesh; slaughterhouses are coming up in various places, and milch cattle are disappearing.
The UPA, he charged, has no subsidy for agriculture or cow rearing, but there is subsidy for the cutting of milch animals. This is ruining the small farmer, he said, but this Government is totally alienated from the civilisation of India and the life of the ordinary people and cannot understand the utility of farm animals. Narendra Modi thus made it amply clear that milch cattle were being slaughtered under the guise of mutton exports, and pointed out that the regime had banned the export of cotton which is a legitimate item of export.
He berated the State Government for inability to provide drinking water to the people, and for the closure of the sugar mill in the area on account of indifference to the fate of sugarcane farmers. The Congress shehzade, he said, recently claimed that he had the full map of what Indian infrastructure should be in his mind. If the Congress has taken 60 years to make a map, the BJP leader mocked, it will take 600 years to bring it to the ground!
Winding up his hectic tour at Buxar, where Sri Rama received his education, the Gujarat Chief Minister said that to this day the term “Ram Rajya” is associated with good governance in the minds of ordinary citizens because it stands for the welfare of all without bias or discrimination; there is no place for ours vs others or high or low, but inclusive development for all. This, he said, is the context in which Mahatma Gandhi used the phrase.
The 10 years of UPA rule, “Sonia sarkar”, he said as the crowds chortled with delight, have done no good to the nation. Nor had the State Government done any good to the people, he said, and pointed out that when the Gujarat government wanted to recognise innovative farmers from all over the country, the Chief Minister (Nitish Kumar) had arrogantly refused to send farmers from Bihar to accept awards from Gujarat.
Narendra Modi said that the Ganga floods take valuable farm land away every year, and the solution to this problem is the river linking plan conceived by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. To loud acclaim, he told the people he was coming to neighbouring Varanasi to fulfill his pledge to first take care of the lack of development in eastern India, and vowed to deliver on all his promises.
Niticentral.com, 2 April 2014