New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday underlined India’s successes in the last nine years of his party’s reign, rattling off progress in several spheres yet wondering why “some people couldn’t see it”.
Modi called the nine years of the NDA as the “India decade”, dismissing the Congress-led UPA governance from 2004 to 2014 as the “lost decade”.
The Prime Minister did not touch upon the Adani Group’s crisis, despite loud sloganeering from the Opposition benches for a response, after attacks linking him to the embattled billionaire Gautam Adani.
In his reply to President Droupadi Murmu’s pre-Budget speech, Modi said it had given a direction to crores of Indians. He said her speech should be celebrated by the country, as it enhanced tribal pride and was an inspiration to women.
He said challenges would come for him, but the support of 140 crore Indians was more powerful.
The Prime Minister told the House that India had successfully come out of the pandemic, and that the whole world viewed her with hope and positivity. “India is the 5th largest economy despite Covid,” he said. ‘But why is the world looking at India with hope?” he asked, adding the answer lay in the country’s capabilities.
“There is a stable and decisive government in India today… one that has got full majority,” he said. “Reform today is not out of compulsion but out of conviction,” he said, adding the government would keep at it.
He spoke about the “successful vaccination programme” the country had enforced during Covid. “Today, India is emerging as a manufacturing hub. The world likens its progress in India’s progress.”
“But some people are still sad,” Modi added. “Some people can’t see the country’s progress,” he said.
He attacked the previous Congress-led UPA government for the continuous scams that plagued the country during its tenure from 2004 to 2014. Modi said the country fell prey to violence in those 10 years, and that India’s voice in the global platform was weakened.
“The UPA is known for converting every opportunity into a problem… They were stuck in the 2G scam when telecom was booming, the Commonwealth Games scam took place when it was time to showcase our sporting power,” Modi said.
He said the Congress didn’t have the strength to look terror in the eye and that is why India “bled those 10 years”. “India will forever remember that lost decade – from 2004 to 2014,” Modi added.
Modi rubbed in his point by saying the Harvard University conducted a study titled the “Rise and Decline of the Congress Party”, adding that this would soon be a subject of study in all universities of the world.
“Some think abusing Modi is the only way to survival… but they can’t understand the people’s love for me,” the Prime Minister said to loud desk thumping, while the Opposition screamed “Adani, Adani”.
He said those who had got pucca homes, gas connections, roads, electricity, power and toilets would not believe in the Opposition’s “lies, mistakes and abuses”.
“Today the country is seeing an infrastructural revolution,” Modi said. “There were 70 airports constructed in 70 years, but we have constructed 70 in 9 years. Today, every MP writes to me for a Vande Bharat Express in his state. India has become the largest hub in Asia for building helicopters.”
He said he had unfurled the Tricolour in Kashmir’s Srinagar despite threats that he would be shot dead. “Today, Jammu and Kashmir celebrates the festival of democracy,” Modi said. He spoke of the improved situation in the northeast in the same breath, adding that nearly 7,500 Northeast militants had surrendered in the last nine years.
He also said India would move with conviction towards 2014, to celebrate 100 years of Independence, reminding all to read Mahatma Gandhi’s literature again.
Modi has been under attack from the Opposition this session, with leaders questioning his proximity to embattled billionaire Gautam Adani, whose group’s net worth has taken a big hit following an American short-seller’s accusations of financial malfeasance.
In Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said: “The wealth of one of the closest friends of PM Modi increased by 13 times in two and a half years. In 2014, it was Rs 50,000 cr while in 2019 it became Rs 1 lakh crore. What magic happened that suddenly in two years assets worth Rs 12 lakh crores happened… is it due to favour of friendship?”
During a debate in the Upper House, Kharge thundered: “If I speak the truth, is it anti-national? I’m not an anti-national. I’m more patriotic than anyone here. I’m a ‘bhoomi-putra’… You’re looting the country and calling me an anti-national.”
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said it was “smart” of the Opposition to give data “corroborating” their accusations, “but it is completely infused with insinuations against PM Modi and that’s what we are objecting to. They are overtly insinuating at the PM”.
On Tuesday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi mounted a scathing attack on the Prime Minister in Lok Sabha, saying people asked him during his “Bharat Jodo Yatra” what Modi’s relationship was with Adani.
“I heard Adani’s name in the entire country during the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ — people kept asking me how he gets into (just) any business and succeeds,” Gandhi said, adding people also wondered how Adani’s net worth had increased from USD 8 billion to USD 140 billion between 2014 and 2022.
The Opposition has been at the government’s throat ever since the Budget Session began, demanding a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe into the Adani crisis, and whether it threatened common investors.
The BJP has rejected these charges and said the “whole ecosystem of the Congress was based on the twin pillars of deal and commission”.
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