Modi addresses the State on the eve of 67th Independence Day(Video)


Gandhinagar, 14 August 2013

In his address to the state on the eve of country’s 67th Independence Day celebration scheduled at Kutch, chief minister Narendra Modi extended hearty greetings to citizens of the state. Chief minister Narendra Modi called on each citizen to walk the path of hard-work and make Mother India take the place of ‘Jagadguru’ in the World, and keep India’s tricolour flutter with all the pride.

Giving the mantra of ‘One India, Supreme India,’ chief minister Modi said Gujarat’s development journey is journey towards people’s welfare applying good governance in right directions.

Chief Minister’s Address As Follows:

Dear brothers and sisters of Gujarat, on the occasion of Independence Day many respects and greetings to all and Vande Mataram

It has been over 6 decades of time since we attained freedom. We attained freedom only after so many great leaders of this country fought for the freedom struggle, many youths betted their lives for it and remained incarcerated for rest of their youth, underwent agonies, severe pain and sufferings, and so many families got ruined.

Value of this freedom is unique. From very early days since India became salve to others, this country has been struggling for almost 1000-1200 years. It has been fight in one or the other form and we tested the fruits of freedom only in 1947 from the freedom struggle.

In this country there is an entire generation that neither has seen slavery nor could imagine the agony resulted from slavery. I am one of them. I was born after independence and my heart shivers when hear about the dark days of slavery. Then we come to know the importance of freedom. But unfortunately, with the Independence there is aggravation of rights and slowly the sense of duty is disappearing. Without sense of duty, in any democracy, whatever the management, whatsoever the public life, it will not make any progress.

On today’s occasion of Independence Day, as a citizen, in all the functioning, whatsoever responsibilities are assigned, whatever duties come to us, it is of the national interest, and we will never retreat in this and move on with courage this mission. Country makes progress only when its citizens have a clear dedication in their minds to take their country to newer heights.

When this World is celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekanand, it is our joint responsibility to fulfill Vivekanandji’s dream. Be it state administration or civil administration, those sitting at helm of governance or administration or even students and farmers, urban or rural, all should have one dream of realizing Vivekanandji’s dream of making Mother India – ‘Vishwa-Guru’. To make this dream come true, we must strive continually and fulfill the duties towards it. One thing is certain, protection of other’s rights lies in the fulfillment of our duties. Our roles and duties involves of the protection of other’s rights. The moment we drift from our duties, we endanger the rights of others. In independence, the sense of duty and fierce hard-working attitude is the need of social life today.

Brothers and sisters, Uttarakhand witnessed horrible catastrophe, pilgrims from each corners of Hindustan met with death, several people lost their lives and many villages from the Kedarnath Ghat vanished from the map. Thousands of families became homeless and lost their loved ones, it is hard to forget this tragedy. Despite such horrific tragedies in public life people must not leave hopes and courage, and all of us should move on. Let us remember all of them at this moment.

Brothers and sisters, there is an attempt to challenge India’s independence and its border security. Neighboring country is killing our country’s young soldiers and army men. Few days ago beheaded our brave soldiers. There would be no single citizen of Hindustan who is not acutely pained by this. In this background of pain, blood smeared martyrs, in such an atmosphere, amidst the sounds of firing by enemy nation, today we are preparing to unfurl our tricolour and we must remember those who gave their lives in protecting the honour of tricolour and take pride in their selfless service for nation.

Also this year offers unique inspiration. In 1962 during the war with China, Lata Mangeshkar sang one immortal song ‘Aye Mere Vatan Ke Logo’ which even today runs in the Hindustan’s each vein, each word of song and its meaning gives goose bumps to us. It is the golden anniversary of that song this year and today is the occasion to remember all those who struggled for Independent India and gave their lives.

Brothers and sisters,

Lives of all these people create the path for sense of duty for us. We take state’s development surpassing new heights and Gujarat move on in development journey of 21st century and realize the mantra of developing Gujarat to its fullest for the India’s growth. And we must not fail in this; there should not be any laxity on our part, for this we are performing ‘Parishram Yagna’ and ‘Development Yanga’. For me it is a matter happiness that our country which often failed to come out of the shackles of caste and community and same old hypocritical talks, politics was done by eulogizing others and dragging and pulling down somebody. This entire struggle has inspired the people’s will to unfurl the flag of development.

There is despair allover and time has ripened to create an environment of trust and confidence amongst this atmosphere of disappointment. Especially young friends, this country has no reason to feel disappointed when its 65% of population is below 35 years of age. Old parents living in difficulties and even if they are on deathbeds, a new hope will cross their minds when they see their young wards. Our Mother India must reeling under great sense of pride when it sees more than 65% of youths below 35 years and must be thinking about coming bright moments lying ahead while reminiscing about the struggle of 1200 years. Youth of the country is the promise that is going to deliver.

Brothers and sisters, development should not one-sided, development of a few makes the system handicapped. Does the body of a person feel healthy if one limb is damaged or paralyzed? That body is unhealthy only and disabled, a body can only be called healthy when each of its parts is healthy and wholesome. Society can also be called healthy when its every section, be it poor, Dalit, oppressed, exploited or deprived, and relishing the fruits of development. Society will become healthy and seem wholesome only if all of them have become partners in the journey of development. In this large India, when some of its parts are poor, underdeveloped and live with difficulties then how shall we call Mother India healthy? Our Mother India can be termed healthy only when Hindustan’s every district, each village and every taluka is moving ahead keeping pace with the journey of development. And thus our mantra has been the path of development. Development which is touching everyone, all-round, inclusive, throughout and its fruits are reaching first to the citizens living farthest. In education field, Gujarat has tried to surpass new heights. Building universities, giving higher education in costly schools is one thing but this government is concerned about importance of primary schools in remotest forest areas. It is concerned for primary education in villages. It is worried about primary schools in urban poor areas and whether children of this locality have access to school and they get good education and inculcate good values, get confidence of making progress in life. This struggle is all about it and we have yielded fruitful results of it.

Gujarat has launched battle against malnutrition. We have received good results of the efforts we put in past five-six years. People who know this subject are one-voiced that Gujarat has taken a right direction. Gujarat is witnessing great success on the front of curbing malnutrition. Malnutrition cannot be eliminated merely by allocating budgets of trillions of rupees. For this, there must be awareness among the people. People must be educated about this issue. Mothers should know what and what not to feed to a new-born. We all can take up this work of educating people. We can acquaint the mothers of poor families with this knowledge. Only with such efforts we can win the battle against malnutrition.

CAG of India has recently come up some figures which are particularly encouraging for us. The CAG report has mentioned that the percentage of improvement in the state of malnutrition is highest in Gujarat across India. Our continual efforts of six years have resulted in to an improvement of 36%. This is indicative that our efforts are in right direction. With a little more effort, with a little more awareness, with a little more joining of hands, we can surely get results.

Brothers and sisters, youths are crown jewels of this country. We cannot afford to fail in providing jobs to our youths and fulfilling their aspirations. They are like pearls and diamonds of our country. If our youths are not empowered, how our country would shine. That is why I tell you, we need to focus particularly on the youths. Gujarat has initiated in this direction. We have focused on skill development. It is a matter of proud for us that our efforts of skill development have received accolades at national level and we have bagged the Prime Minister’s award for skill development. Even the Central government has asked the rest of India to emulate the path taken by Gujarat.

It is our belief that if India wants to compete with the world, our youths would need skill, they must have wide scale of work and they should work with a great speed. Convergence of skill, scale and speed provides necessary faith for getting success.

In a successful effort, we have engaged the poor mothers and sisters of our state in economic activities through the medium of sakhimandals. Today, poor women in Gujarat are managing economic activities of crores of rupees under Mission Mangalam Yojana. We have also planned to spread this network of sakhimandalas among the women of urban poor families. We are giving them training and engaging them in economic activities.

My dear brothers and sisters of Gujarat, you would be happy to know about a great deed of the women of sakhimandal in Dahod district. The news made me so happy that I have decided to meet them while I will be on visit to Dahod. These women have purchased a small bus and doing transport business. They take the children of remote forest areas to the schools and return them back to their homes. And the in the rest of the time they use the bus for generating income via providing commuting facilities to the passengers. This has, on one side given employment to women, and on the other side tribal children have got education. I congratulate my sisters who have come up with such idea. And if some official is behind this idea, I congratulate him. I will surely meet these women. When I learnt about this, I felt proud for such an innovative work. You too can do such work.

The work of women empowerment has been done on great scale under Mission Mangalam scheme and the network of sakhimandals. We want to involve the women of Gujarat to our development journey on a great scale.

Mahatma Gandhi used to equate ramrajya with gramrajya. He talked of gramswaraj. But now the villages cannot wait any more. We want our villages to scale new heights. For this we need to provide city-like facilities to villages, we need to ensure an improvement in their quality of life. You will be surprised to know that a decade back only four percent houses in villages used to get pipe drinking water. About 96% of people were such who had to go out of their house for getting water. It was a great waste of time and energy of our mothers and sisters. We undertook a campaign for providing pipe water to them with a view to improve their quality of life. Today, we have been successful in providing pipe water to 75-76% of houses. And we still aim for more.

Brothers and sisters,

In the wake of population of consumers increasing and number of growers decreasing, we have to decide how to increase productivity, add value and make farmers self-reliant.

The Sagar Khedu Yojna is campaign for the welfare of fishermen living along the seacoast. The belt from Umargam to Ambaji is for the service of Van Bandhu, bring about change in the life of tribal people and educate them, to provide health, transport, skill development and jobs for them.

Gujarat has been urbanized. We have to care for the neo middle class, as they got livelihood, they have dreams, they want to live with dignity and they do not want to go back to the past.

The Affordable Housing Scheme is government’s ambitious campaign, an intervention, to construct 22-lakh residential units, launched for middle class, lower class and neo middle class, eager to come out of slums and shanties. This should result in fall in prices of houses and neo middle class living in their own houses.

Work is half complete, targets high, dreams big. But, friends, only when the dream is big one enjoys running after it. And I am sure of completing the work with your cooperation.

This is a Purusharth for men-women, poor-tribal, destitute, dalits, oppressed, to make them partners of progress. I was recently in Hyderabad. I share a feeling expressed there that government has only one dharma and that is ‘India First’. Government has only one scripture that is India’s Constitution. Government’s only devotion is devotion to Bharat. Government’s only strength is people. Government’s only worship is welfare of 1.25-billion Indians. Government’s only work culture is ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’.

Let us realize this mantra, the mantra to achieve dream carrying all along for good governance!

Brothers and sisters,

I once again extend hearty greetings to the people on the auspicious occasion of Independence; with a pledge to ensure India’s Tricolour fly for ever, Mother India’s stay put as world guru.

It is time to take inspiration from the lives of Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and many great persons, freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives and pay them our million tributes, march together to realize the dream of One India, Best India. Best wishes to all, once again.