The election manifesto published by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014 had initiated a new political discourse by which the saffron party tried to negate the contributions made by some of the important political personalities who stood for the integrity, secularism and fundamental principles of the India’s democracy.
Wiping out the outstanding role of Jawahral Nehru, Moulana Abdul Kalam Azad and few others in the freedom struggle, the manifesto selectively mentioned only about the contributions of Tilak, Gandhi, Aurobindo, and Patel. According to the manifesto only these leaders had a vision to reconstruct the political and economic institutions of India as a continuum of civilization consciousness, which made India one country, one people, and one nation.
The reason behind such selective eradication of a group of people as propagated by the BJP is that after achieving independence, the leaders at the helm of affairs lost the spirit and the vision, which the freedom movement had evoked.
These people as mentioned in the manifesto discarded the vision of great Indian tradition and adopted the institutional framework of administration created by the Britishers which was quite alien to India’s world-view. It is unfortunate that these leaders could not comprehend India’s inner vitality, which was the main force responsible for India’s survival despite several attacks and prolonged foreign rule and thus, failed to rekindle the spirit of India – the manifesto asserted. The manifesto has emphasised the inherent ideology of governance of the party as –“Instead of creating a socio-economic and political paradigm of governance drawn from the civilizational consciousness of India, the leaders tried to follow whatever was being practiced in this or that western country.”
Unfortunately the BJP could not able to establish their propagated vision of governance in last five years of their ruling, which has been supposedly drawn from the civilizatiional consciousness of India. Instead, they have practised such a socio-political archetype of governance that is responsible for rising disparities, social and communal divide and terrorism leading to a fractured society. In the last five years the BJP has already proved by their acts that an epitomised governance never ever established only by catchphrases and motivational dialogues.
It needs consistence efforts to preserve and protect the essential ingredients of democracy that are undoubtedly developed in the western country. These are unforgivable pretentions where the Indian political bigots utilized all kinds of scientific and technological equipments produced in the west for overall development and at the same time paradoxically negate western political and philosophical principles because of their historical inabilities to develop the same in their respective territory. Here, we would like to cite only example of by which it can rightly be proved that this party believes the prosperity and development only in papers, not in practise.
In the 2014 manifesto the Bharatiya Janata party assured before the nation to initiate a massive low cost housing programme to ensure that by the time the nation completes 75 years of its Independence, every family would have a pucca house of its own. It would be an innovatively designed scheme that dovetails various existing programmes and also encourages the housing sector by appropriate policy interventions and credit availability including interest subventions, where necessary. The manifesto ensured that these houses would be equipped with the basic facilities of toilet, piped water supply, electricity and proper access. Consequently the scheme Pradhan MantriAwas Yojana (PMAY) that promises housing for all by 2022 was launched on June 25, 2015. All the 4,041 statutory towns as per census 2011 are eligible for coverage under the scheme.
It would be implemented in three phases. In the first phase (April 2015 to March 2017) 100 cities are selected, in the second phase (April2017 to March 2019) 200 more cities, and in the third phase (April 2019 to March 2022) the remaining cities would be covered. Under PMAY (urban), 3,888 cities (468 Class-1 cities) were selected. But the Modi regime has failed to fulfil the said promises both in rural and in urban India.
On January 2019, the Prime Minister said that his government built around 1.25 crore houses in five years. Immediately after this stunning claim, on February 1, in his interim budget speech Piyush Goyal claimed in Parliament that the Modi Government had constructed 1.53 crore houses in its tenure. The most interesting fact is that Narendra Modi launched the PMAY with a stated vision of ‘housing for all’ by 2022.The target set then was 2.98 crore houses. These facts clearly established that the Modi government has achieved only fifty percent success of its assured target.
The kind of assertion of initiating a new housing scheme in the post independence era by the Modi Government also was a lie.Infact the first annual report of the ministry under Modi government (2014-15) admits the total number of houses constructed under Indira Awas Yojana(IAY) since its inception are 3,33,82,000 with a total expense of Rs.1,17,039 crore.
Moreover,the Ministry of Rural Development website says that IAY has been restructured into Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin(PMAY) with effect from April 1, 2016.Without any other major changes in the scheme, the amount released per house increased from Rs 70,000 to Rs 1,25,000 under PMAY.As per the government report it has sanctioned only 95,35,421 houses on February ,2019,but the Prime Minister has claimed on January 19 that under his rule 1.25 crore new houses had been constructed. Piyush Goyel went a few steps ahead of the Prime Minister to claim that 1.53 crore houses had been built under the PMAY-when the total applicants are note more than 1.12 crore.
Therefore, the people of this country should precisely ask the Modi government to reveal the real doings under the PMAY scheme during their regime. Those who always prefers to endure pretensions and adopts fallacious facts for electoral benefits should be discarded by the people for safeguarding our constitutional principles.
