BENGALURU: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended “casteism, dynastic rule, appeasement” in the country, adding that the earlier policies were made on the basis of caste and opportunities were handed out on dynastic considerations and budget allocations were made to appease certain sections.
Addressing a gathering in Bengaluru on ‘Indian Polity-65 years — Scenario & Paradigm Shift Under Modi Ji’ organised by Samvada at the Town Hall here on Thursday evening, Shah said, “Socio-economic spectrum led to the crumbling of the age-old vices of casteism, appeasement and dynastic rule. This is one of the biggest achievements India made in the last nine years. Earlier, policies were made on the basis of caste, opportunities were handed out on dynastic considerations and budget allocations were made to appease sections of society”.
“Prime Minister Modi ended these vices and this was a big paradigm shift for India. We never took decisions to please people, but we took decisions that are good for the people”, he added.
He urged people to vote after considering both the party and its leader. “If you vote for an individual, you are likely to make a mistake in choosing your leader. But, if you take both the party and its leader into consideration, you are likely to select the right government”, he said.
Shah said that the leaders of parties are actually not individuals, rather they are institutions that are anchored to the ideology of the party to which they belong. He also appealed to the people to compare the performance of all the political parties in the last 75 years.
“Be it the Congress, the Communists, the Socialists or the BJP — all of these parties have ruled India in turns for pretty long periods. Every data related to the performance of these parties are available in the public domain. As citizens of this nation who are aware, you should compare all parties on the basis of their performances,” he said.
The Home Minister said with immense conviction that the BJP has given the best performance among all the parties and in every aspect of the polity. “Pick any aspect of our polity and compare us with other parties and I can say with complete belief that you will find that we have given the best performance”, he said.
He evoked the issue of BIMARU states (sick states) and said that Congress got the opportunity to rule Bihar, undivided Uttar Pradesh, undivided Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. But after a long reign of the Congress in the seventies, the Planning Commission named them BIMARU because of their horrible economic and human development indices, adding that once the BJP ruled these states, they were all pulled out of their BIMARU status.
Referring to India’s trajectory and the paradigm shift attained in the last nine years, Amit Shah there was a systemic shift from privilege to potential in the political culture during the Modi government’s rule. “Earlier, your status was decided by your birth and not by your potential. You will become a leader only if you are born into a power-driven certain family. But during BJP’s rule, this tradition was upturned and political space was opened for everyone. This paved the way for India’s journey from potential to power”, he said.
Shah said that the Modi style of governance adopted the bottom-to-top approach in which the last person in the lowest strata of the economic hierarchy is taken into consideration while formulating policies. “The BJP believes in the philosophy of integral humanism, or Antyodaya. This philosophy forms the core of the BJP’s policies. Could you imagine the pain of girls and women in more than 10 crore families that did not have toilets? It was PM Narendra Modi who thought of protecting their dignity and built toilets in every household”, he said.
Shah also cited the examples of providing gas cylinders to 10 crore women who bore the pain of cooking food for their families in firewood at the cost of their health. He further added that the emergence of new political leadership from across the socio-economic spectrum led to the crumbling of the age-old vices of casteism, appeasement, and dynastic rule.
Later in the evening, Shah held a meeting with MLAs, MLCs and MPs from Bengaluru at the hotel where he is staying to discuss strategies to ensure the party’s victory in at least 20 of the 28 Assembly seats in the city. It is also learnt that he sought reports on all the 28 constituencies and discussed plans to ensure the victory of all the sitting MLAs while looking to raise the number to 20. The BJP, after Operation Lotus, currently has 15 MLAs from Bengaluru.