Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Sunday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will always be credited for having introduced a new work culture in India wherein each of the pro-poor and public welfare schemes was designed to reach all people, regardless of their caste, creed, religion or vote consideration.
Addressing a press conference here, he said that purely objective parameters were followed to meet the requirement wherever it was not met in the past and to deliver justice wherever justice had been denied in the past.
This was quite a departure from the past practice followed by the Congress and its allied governments wherein vote bank politics pre-determined the selective roll-out of state benefits, said Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel.
The Prime Minister successfully raised the standards of public delivery much above the vote consideration, based on the principle of justice for all and then left it to the public to decide whom they wanted to vote for, and the public too endorsed this approach by returning the Modi government for the second term with a much higher mandate than the earlier election, he said.
The citizen-centric schemes such as PM Awas Yojna and Ujjwala Yojna reached every such household where these amenities were found lacking and the authorities never asked as to which religion or caste the family belongs to, or which political party they had voted for in the last election, said Singh, who is also the Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office.
This new work culture, he said, will become a new norm in Indian politics and the masses will expect every political party to follow the same.
Singh said that Prime Minister Modi will always be credited for having introduced a new work culture in India wherein each of the pro-poor and public welfare schemes were designed in such a manner so as to reach the most needy or the last man in the queue, regardless of caste, creed, religion or vote consideration, according to a Personnel Ministry statement.
During a short span of eight years, the Centre has been able to bring many schemes closer to 100% saturation and benefits are given to deserving people by following the principle of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas”, he said.
Singh said people are getting the benefits of welfare schemes without any discrimination, unlike in the past, when appeasement politics was rampant. The minister emphasised that these welfare measures brought crores of people out of the clutches of abject poverty and gave them a life of dignity.
Singh told journalists that they can find out themselves that the beneficiaries of these welfare schemes belong to all castes, creed and religions as the lists of beneficiaries are made with full objectivity and without any bias, as was the case in earlier dispensations, the statement said.
The minister said that these schemes along with other measures like rural job scheme have transformed the lives of the poorest of the poor and have helped raise their standard of living to a level of dignity.
Singh also emphasised that full benefits are directly reaching the needy without any leakages through a transparent and efficient delivery mechanism.
Giving the example of north-eastern region, he said prior to 2014, the region suffered economically due to myopic policies of the successive central governments, but soon after the Modi government took over in 2014, the prime minister had stated that every effort would be made to bring the region at par with the more developed areas of the country.
Singh said, in the last eight years, not only developmental gaps were bridged successfully, but the north-eastern region has also gained psychological confidence.
He said that significant development in terms of road, rail and air connectivity is helping facilitate the movement of goods and persons not only across the region but also across the country.
(With PTI inputs)
