Prioritised helping poor as part of Covid fight: Modi
BHOPAL: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday the Centre prioritised assisting the financially backward sections of the society as part of its strategy to combat the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
Speaking during a video interaction with Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) beneficiaries from Madhya Pradesh, he said the fight against Covid-19 was more difficult for India than other parts of the world given the problems caused by large population, lives and jobs affected by migration and the medical infrastructure woes.
“India gave the first priority to the poor in its strategy to combat the crisis due to coronavirus. Be it Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana or Pradhan Mantri Rozgar Yojana, we thought about food and employment of the poor from day one itself,” the Prime Minister said.
Asserting that with the change in the functioning of the government now the schemes were reaching the beneficiaries, Modi also said work was on to mitigate the problems being faced on the employment front.
“The schemes of the government are reaching the ground and are being implemented at a fast pace because of change in the functioning of the government. There was ‘vikriti’ in the previous government’s system. They used to ask questions about the poor and also give answers themselves,” he said.
He accused the previous government of keeping the poor and villagers away from basic amenities such as roads, electricity, housing, cooking fuel, banking etc, and said: “They used to speak the word poor hundreds of times a day. They recited the word poor like a song, but did not adopt their welfare in practice. Such acts are called ‘pakhand’ (hypocrisy). They did not give these facilities to the poor but used to express false sympathy.”
Talking about his government’s measures, he said 800 million Indians received free ration during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, including 50 million from Madhya Pradesh.
He described the pandemic as the biggest disaster faced by the humanity in the last 100 years, and said people should continue to wear masks, sanitise hands and maintain social distancing to check the spread of the virus.
Praising the Madhya Pradesh government for its welfare works and taking the state from the category of BIMARU states, Modi said that this is the benefit of the “double engine” governments (same party ruling in state and Centre) as the state strongly implements the central government’s schemes.