Well, the Independence Day speech by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all over the news anyways, and yes there were many things said this morning, but I had to publish my thought process about few of the things that I noticed to be promising for future of India as a nation:
1. A swift way to promote banking and to bring most of the India under banking and insurance infrastructure by announcing a free bank account with a debit card and an insurance of 100000 INR for even the poorest of the poor - the PM Jan Dhan Yojana. Direct visible impact - insurance to even the underprivileged, the Indian form of social security for the poor and the needy, and an increase in banking transactions and usage of debit cards. The promising future I see, may be India can afford to have its own banking transaction handling mechanism with all the increased volumes similar to NETS in Singapore. And even beyond this, this will convert so many transactions from the much-hyped parallel economy of India and bring them into mainstream, eventually leading to overall GDP growth.
2. The slogan of 'Make in India' and the related appeal to all Indians to use their entrepreneurial spirit and help reduce the imports of the nation by manufacturing indigenous products for domestic consumption is another promising announcement. Many experts believe that as India's rise in recent years was mainly due to growth in service industry and that it went from being a primarily agriculture based country to a country with growing service industry, skipping the essential phase of being the country with strong manufacturing industry, to sustain its growth in long term, it has to fill in this gap. Well, the invite to industries from all over the world to come and 'make in India' and at the same time, the encouragement to people of this country to manufacture something or the other, on whatever scale possible, is that bridge which NaMo has devised for the country. Not to mention the open appeal is inspiring for budding entrepreneurs planning to start their own small and medium sized industrial units.
3. Mandate to MPs, probably the first, and that too to make at least one village in their individual constituencies an 'Ideal Village' and increase this number to three by 2019. So, all round rural development through out the country is a mandate now. While use of gamification tactics like announcing the 'Ideal village' prize to villages meeting certain yardsticks of cleanliness, progress, creativity, education is part of older government policies; not restricting to just one ideal village per year in a state and making sure that there is at least three in each constituency emphasises the uniformity in progress of huge rural population of India. Connecting this plan and also the cleanliness mandate with the year 2019, when the nation will celebrate 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi is work of genius, I would say.
4. Retiring the planning commission of India for a more inclusive economic policy making machine, robust enough to take in everything from modern ventures like Public Private Partnerships (PPP) all the way to modern technology for optimum use of national and in particular the natural resources, is another promise for the better future. India will now have a holistic economic planning authority, created on the basis of current flat world realities of the international market, and current social state of its citizens. This is the part which I am most curios to know more about, and am looking forward to formation of this new organisation.
5. Crowd sourcing as many of us like to call it and Jan Bhagidari as NaMo referred to it - a promise of inclusion, a promise of using the masses to make impossible things possible, a promise of citizens giving back to the nation in one way or another, a promise of Indians coming together to make India a better place, is another interesting aspect that NaMo has brought in.
Of course, there was also the fact that today's speech by NaMo was extempore, and he called himself a Pradhan Sevak, and his speech had an appeal to accept the girl child with equal love, and an appeal for Naxalites to start thinking about farming more than naxalism, and an advice for parents to do their jobs better especially with respect to upbringing of their sons so that they don't become rapists, and a quick whip to bureaucrats and an address to all nationals to remember the sacrifices of earlier generations and to not forget that this nation is built more by its farmers and workers and common folk, than it's leaders, but for me, the top five most promising things were the ones in bullet points above.
Wish you all a very Happy Indian Independence Day and a great weekend ahead.
