By Atul Aneja and S. Ravi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday showcased India’s deep inner reserves, by conversing with a range of people, from pilots to women loco drivers, who are powering the rise of a new and resilient India.
In his monthly Mann Ki Baat address, PM Modi spoke to real people engaged in the thick of the Covid war, as symbols of India’s stunning resilience to stare down any calamity.
The PM cited examples of progress to demonstrate the beginning of the rise of a New India, energised by Team India under his seven years of stewardship. The field of progress is breath-taking — from digital commerce to satellite launches, from a cleanliness movement to constructing roads—all being delivered in mission mode. “All this was possible because in these seven years, more than as the Government or as the people, we worked together as one country. We worked as a team. We worked as Team India,” the Prime Minister asserted.
PM Modi singled out people’s resilient power by standing together in total defiance against a deluge of natural calamities, ranging from Tauktae and Yaas cyclones, floods, earthquakes, and the most lethal of all — the unprecedented and ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
Also Read: Country has followed mantra of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas: Modi
Commending the people for their patience and fortitude, PM said: “People who led rescue and relief work deserve more appreciation than can be expressed. The Centre, State governments and local administration have come together to face this calamity.”
PM Modi extolled the mind boggling contribution of people, ranging from women loco drivers, to pilots who flew oxygen in droves for critically ailing Covid-19 patients from the far corners of the globe.
Likewise, he also praised Indian Air Force (IAF), Army, Defence Research and Development Organisation, Indian Navy and Indian Army — the inner core of India's physical and moral strength — in helping fellow-countrymen suffering from the deadly disease. PM Modi highlighted the stellar role of pilots who, on short notice, mobilised the enormous power of the IAF to ferry oxygen tankers, medical supplies, cylinders and concentrators, from various nooks and corners of the globe.
Always keen to showcase the contribution of women in all spheres, PM Modi praised the all-women loco team of Oxygen Express of Indian Railways along with other engine drivers, who have been moving empty and filled oxygen tankers across the country.
Emphasising that the entire nation, including grassroot Covid hunters, had been mobilised to fight the disease, the PM spoke to a laboratory technician involved in testing patients for Covid. He strongly commended him for “the work of sample collection, going amidst infected patients, and taking their sample is an example of yeoman service.”
He also commended the efforts of the industry and agriculture, which in the midst of all the upheavals, had managed record food grain production—the feedstock for the collective rise of a New India.
