India moving at unprecedented speed towards development: PM
NEW DELHI: India is working at an “unprecedented speed and unexpected scale” to develop itself and to meet the expectations of the world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said during an interaction with the Indian community in Bali on Tuesday that was laced with cultural references and a celebration of the points of historical confluence between India and Indonesia.
Addressing a gathering of some 800 members of the Indian diaspora and “Friends of India” on the sidelines of the G20 Summit, Modi said this was the “big difference” between India before and after 2014. He said this was “not due to Modi” but because of the speed and scale at which everything is being done.
“India does not think small any longer,” he said, speaking in Hindi. “Today’s India, while taking pride in its heritage, staying close to its roots and aiming for the sky, is moving ahead to become a developed India.” The country’s roadmap for development includes the political and economic aspirations of the world, he added.
This is being done not just for the people of the country but because the world has many expectations from India in the 21st century, and India sees this as “a responsibility and a duty and is moving ahead for the good of the world”, Modi said.
Since 2014, when the BJP came to power, more than 320 million bank accounts have been opened – as much as the population of the US – and 30 million poor people have been provided free homes, he said. A total of 55,000km of national highways have been built, and the number of Indians who have benefited from free doses of Covid-19 vaccines is 2.5 times the population of the US and the European Union, he added.
Other Indian initiatives in solar power, health care, and on the climate crisis will benefit the world, and India is standing shoulder to shoulder for a friend such as Indonesia, Modi said. South Asian countries are benefiting from India’s prowess in space and there is growing interest around the world in India’s home-grown defence hardware such as the BrahMos missile and Tejas combat jet, he added.
Modi highlighted the special ties between India and Bali, the only Hindu-majority region of Indonesia, that go back thousands of years. He noted that while he was in Bali, people at Cuttack in Odisha were celebrating the Bali Jatra, a festival that celebrates trade relations between the two regions. He referred to the shared culture and religious practices of India and Bali, and said: “At a time when the grand Ram Temple is taking shape in India, we proudly remember the Ramayana tradition of Indonesia.”
He added, “We often say it’s a small world. If we look at ties between India and Indonesia, these are not mere words but the truth. The waves of the ocean have kept alive these ties. Like those waves keep flowing, our ties are alive.”