Home Minister Amit Shah today said, “India is a geo-cultural country and unless we understand this, we cannot understand the concept of India.”
He was inaugurating a three-day international seminar on “Revisiting the Ideas of India from Swaraj to New India,” organised by Delhi University’s Political Science Department. Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan was present.
Shah said that “if we see India as a geopolitical country then we will never understand India.” He said, “it is our culture that unites and holds India together and unless we adopt this idea, we cannot imagine a new India.”
“It is the basic nature of India to accept whatever is good in the world. India never thought small, and for thousands of years we are people who follow Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,” he said.
The Home Minister said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a lot of work has been done to re-glorify India’s social, educational, economic, and cultural legacies. Work has been done to realize the concept of equitable development.
Eighty-crore people of the country have started considering themselves as a part of India’s system, he said. Under the Ujjwala scheme, nine crore people got LPG connections, toilets were built in every house, every person got a house, drinking water was arranged, and medical expenses up to Rs 5 lakh for every poor person are being borne by the Government.
Shah said with the opening of bank accounts in every house, middlemen were eliminated and Rs 19 lakh crore reached the people through the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system.
When Corona came, the whole world was compelled to praise India’s performance and acknowledge that in a country like India, 190 crore vaccines were administered without any disorder.
“This is the Idea of India. Within the economic sphere too, among all major countries of the world, India achieved the highest projected growth rate of 8.9 percent during 2021-22. We have crossed $400 billion in exports in 2022. The export of agriculture is also the highest after independence,” the Home Minister said.
As far as a safe India is concerned, India had no defense policy before Modi Ji became the Prime Minister, he said. “We used to consider the foreign policy as defense policy. For years this country was subjected to covert attacks by our neighboring countries, terrorists were sent,” he said.
India’s defence policy has become clear to the world now when surgical strikes and airstrikes were made after terrorist attacks in Uri and Pulwama.
Shah said that a new type of idea has gained currency in the country, that of fighting for rights. The Constitution has given rights to all, but along with the rights, the obligations have also been mentioned by the Constitution and there is no such right “which we should demand without fulfilling the obligation,” he said.