The country still needs more from 75-year-old Modi.
More changes need to be made in villages and towns.
The sunday mail
New Delhi. Narendra Modi will be the first Prime Minister whose 75th birthday was celebrated with great enthusiasm by the public. People congratulated Prime Minister Modi in their own way. Congratulatory messages were sent to each other. Numerous congratulatory messages were sent to Prime Minister Modi through Facebook and other social media. It is rare to recall any leader in independent India celebrating such a birthday while in power. Prime Minister Modi is well-deserving. Modi worked tirelessly to reach the highest office in the country. He left his home and lived among the common people. He practiced austerity, and when the opportunity came, he never looked back. He defied all the predictions of astrologers. Numerous attempts were made to dislodge him from power, but no one could shake him. He has won continuously for 25 years.
The politics that the opposition is doing today under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, is only giving strength to Prime Minister Modi. The opposition is not able to understand the sentiments of the common people and the popularity of Prime Minister Modi. Prime Minister Modi is the first leader who has become stronger due to the abuses and attacks of the opposition. If we look from the beginning, when Modi became the Chief Minister of Gujarat, he slowly started building his own model. Modi’s model was the development of the state and such politics in which he could be seen standing out from the crowd. The Godhra incident happened, riots took place. But Modi did not get distracted. He did politics in his own way and took decisions. How Modi became the Chief Minister of Gujarat is also quite interesting. A phone call catapulted Modi, who had been quietly attending to party work in a room at the BJP headquarters in Delhi, to the position of Chief Minister. In 2001, Modi was at the crematorium for the funeral of a photographer when he received a call from then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He returned home that evening to meet him. That meeting laid the foundation for history. He was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat. After that, Modi continued to write history. He led the BJP on a new path in Gujarat, once considered a Congress stronghold. He took oath as Chief Minister of Gujarat in October 2001 and marked a new beginning by leading the party to a resounding victory in 2002. Modi came under attack from both outsiders and his own people over the Godhra incident and the subsequent riots, but he remained undeterred and continued to work in his own way. In 2004, the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre lost the elections, leading to the formation of the Congress-led UPA government. It was the UPA government that brought Modi to the threshold of the post of Prime Minister. If the then Congress President Sonia Gandhi had not formed the coalition government, then the country might not have got a Prime Minister like Modi. Congress and its central ministers did such politics of Muslim appeasement that Modi automatically became the face of the Prime Minister. From sunrise to sunset, the only work of Congress and its ministers was to keep attacking Modi. Regarding the Gujarat riots, Congress was busy in making Modi a staunch enemy of Muslims. Meanwhile, Modi kept getting popular among Hindus. Be it Sonia Gandhi or other leaders of the party, they left no stone unturned in using abusive words against Modi. Then, as the 2014 general elections approached, the Modi wave started spreading across the country. The Congress, intoxicated with power, was unaware of this. When the general election results came in, it suffered a historic defeat, and Modi became the Prime Minister of the country with a majority. After more than thirty decades, the country had a stable, majority government. As soon as Modi assumed power at the center, he began writing a new history. In 11 years, he took the country to heights unimagined. He not only strengthened the country economically but also established new dimensions of development. Gleaming highways, expressways, infrastructure, train expansion, a new Parliament building, revolutionary changes in Delhi, which intellectuals rarely discuss, are now the renovation of every railway station. Like toilets, this too will strengthen the BJP in rural areas. Toilets built in every village have established the BJP and Modi’s identity among the common people living there. Whether the so-called intellectuals in metropolitan cities realize this or not, toilets are still a major issue in rural areas. Schemes like paved roads and tap water in every home further strengthen it. Channels and media outlets rarely discuss these issues. Prime Minister Modi has made India as strong and self-reliant from within as he has earned it international recognition. India is now being recognized as one of the superpowers whose strength other countries acknowledge. Prime Minister Modi says this is a new India, unafraid of the threat of a nuclear bomb. Modi has proven it. By attacking enemy Pakistan not once but three times, he has proved that India has changed. Surgical strikes, air strikes, and Operation Sindoor have established the Indian Army’s dominance worldwide. There is no doubt that Prime Minister Modi’s popularity has not diminished. Whether it’s central elections or state elections, the BJP still gets votes based on Prime Minister Modi’s face. Modi has just turned 75. It seems unlikely that anyone can deter him in the next ten years. The country has had Chief Ministers over the age of 90. Karunanidhi and Prakash Singh Badal are examples. India still needs Modi. End
