Beyond weighty promises

Prime Minister Modi had announced several reforms during his I-Day speech targeted at boosting the country’s all round development.

A national cleanliness scheme titled 'swachch Bharat Abhiyan', was launched on October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and aimed at achieving complete cleanliness in the next five years with all the employees dedicating a 100 hours per year towards cleaning. He had initiated a ‘Make in India' campaign on Deen Dayal Upadhaya’s birthday with the aim of getting foreign companies to explore business possibilities in the country thereby making India a global manufacturing hub.

Now Modi has launched ‘Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna’ on October 11, the birth anniversary of Jaiprakash Narain. According to the new scheme, the Members of the Parliament from both the Houses would identify and develop one village from their constituency having 3000-5000 people for overall development. The selected village would be raised to a standard of a model village by 2016 with development across different sectors like agriculture, health, education, sanitation, environment and livelihood. The scheme envisages the overall development, with two more villages by 2019 and covering over 2500 villages across the country in the coming years. The MPs can use the Rs 5 crore MPLAD fund and also funds from the corporates for the new plan. Modi had said that the village development plan would pave way for more ‘constructive politics’ and would soon pick a village in Varanasi. ‘Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna’ was earlier implemented as ‘Samras Village Scheme’ by Modi in Gujarat during the first 100 days as the Chief Minister of the state. The effort had been bootless and the revived new scheme is expected to change the state of the villages in the country.

Modi has also decided to dedicate the week between Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s birth anniversaries on November 14 and November 19 respectively, to his ‘Clean India ‘ campaign to run in primary schools and anganwadis. The programs if implemented with sincerity could bring about an incredible change in the current predicament of more than 6 lakh villages in India. But the slackness, irresponsibility and the cheap politics prevailing in every sector would topple all the predictions and sincere expectations. Let the initiative propel the much needed transformations that will build a clean and healthy India.