Chennai, Oct 29: Union Minister of State, Dr Jitendra Singh Saturday said that Narendra Modi’s governance model has sustained over the last 20 years, with the promise to sustain in future as well and at the same time, it prepares India for a quantum jump to overtake other countries of the world in the next few years, which in a nutshell would mean that “Modi at 20” lays the foundation for “India at 2047”.
Delivering keynote address on the book “Modi @ 20 – Dreams Meet Delivery” at Vaishnav College for Women here, Dr Jitendra Singh said, to understand the essence and the spirit of “Modi@20”, it is essential to read the book in its entirety and in its real context and perspective.
Referring to Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the State in May this year, Dr Jitendra Singh said, Modi promised that the Centre is focused on ramping up the best infrastructure and outlined a commitment to further popularise Tamil. The Minister said, PM Modi described Tamil Nadu as a special place and lauded the Tamil language as eternal and its culture as global. Modi also quoted a popular verse of nationalist poet Subramania Bharathi in praise of Tamil and said that in every field someone from Tamil Nadu is excelling.
Modi@20: Dreams Meet Delivery” is a compilation of chapters written by Amit Shah, S Jaishankar, Amish Tripathi, PV Sindhu, Anupam Kher, and Sudha Murthy, among others.
Of the several chapters included in the book “Modi @20…” Dr Jitendra Singh referred to the chapter by Amit Shah titled “Democracy, Delivery and Politics of Hope”, which traces nation’s pessimism getting replaced with optimism and Sudha Murthy’s chapter which illustrates the awakening of aspirational India under Modi. Lata Mangeshkar’s chapter highlights Modi’s ability to strike a personal chord, he added.
Dr Jitendra Singh pointed out that Narendra Modi is the only Indian leader to have completed 20 years as the Head of Government, first as Chief Minister and then as Prime Minister and across the world also this could be a rare feat to have been achieved. Secondly, Modi was the rare case of a Chief Minister directly assuming the position of Prime Minister without having been a Member of Parliament in the past.
And most of all, the greatest distinguishing feature is that before Modi became Chief Minister in 2002, he had never held any post in the government or administration or not even contested any election in the past, either at local level or State level or national level, and was mostly occupied in the organisational activities.
Dr Jitendra Singh noted that soon after Modi took over as Chief Minister of Gujarat, his first challenge was a devastating earthquake in Bhuj and as he completed 20 years as head of government, the latest challenge confronted by him was the COVID pandemic sweeping across the nation of 140 crore people. A research study of how these challenges were successfully overcome and adversity was turned into virtue, will also bring to surface Modi’s unique and exclusive work style highlighted by diligent 24×7 focus, his unquenchable quest to go deep into every subject so as to be able to provide new ideas even to the officers who go to brief him, his long hours of introspection about how to innovate new ideas and his intimate connect with the ground which enables him to assure that “Dreams meet Delivery”, as the title of the book suggests.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, while on the one hand, Modi brought in optimum use of technology for last mile delivery through measures like Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), his governance became more and more technology driven which not only helped in ensuring ease of living for common citizen through measure like single portal, single form etc., but also enabled objective delivery of service by civil servants through innovative concepts like “Mission Karmyogi”.
