An iconic leader with innovative thoughts, Modi is the hope of those 55 million
people of Gujarat who believe in progress over propaganda. Under his leadership,
Gujarat has won accolades from all over the world. However, he lets his work speak
for himself. While he painstakingly works to put Gujarat on the global map through
`Vibrant Gujarat’.
Registering a double digit growth, Gujarat continues to accelerate on the path of
prosperity to celebrate the golden jubilee of its formation in 2010. His focus is
to put the state on top in Human Development Index.
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 Girl Child
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To improve the condition of a family women’s empowerment, education, self-reliance
is a pre-requisite. Keeping this in mind, Gujarat embarked upon various programmes.
The initiative from the level of Chief Minister has moved the hearts of the society
and state administration alike. The mood in Gujarat is to set new records; in the
area of education in general and girl-child education in particular.
In 2006-07, the school dropout rate of girl child has come down to 3.68 from 20.81
in 2000-01 (Standard 1 to 5) and to 11.64 from as high as 36.30 (Standard 1 to 7).
What made this possible? Thinking out of the box, innovative ideas implemented at
grassroots.
A Kanya Kelavani Nidhi has been created with a long term goal that no girl child
in Gujarat remains illiterate; and the efforts have started yielding results. Every
gift/souvenir received is deposited in the government treasury for the cause of
girl child education (kanya kelavani) a special fund Kanya Kelavani Nidhi has been
created for this cause. While 13 predecessors over 41 years deposited only Rs.4.55
lacs, at present Rs.287.37 lacs have been deposited in a period of 5 years.
Kanya kelavani Rath Yatra: The drop-out rate is supported by new enrolments through
Kanya kelavani Rath Yatra (girl child enrolment drive), a unique initiative in Gujarat.
Since 2003, every year in the month of June, the Chief Minister along with the team
travels to remote villages to encourage parents to enrol their children in schools.
It is a three day long statewide drive covering all the villages and the urban areas
in scorching summer heat. An atmosphere of festivity and celebration is created.
The young children now wait keenly to get themselves enrolled into schools.
Vidyalaxmi scheme: Yet another initiative is Vidyalaxmi scheme, introduced in villages
where female literacy rate is lower than 35% and in urban areas for girls belonging
to the below-poverty-line families. Vidyalaxmi bond of Rs. 1000/- is given to girl
students who take admission to the 1st std and 8th std. The girl receives the amount
of bond with interest on completion of std 7th and 10th respectively. This ensures
higher retention rate. Kanya kelavani is now a movement in Gujarat addressing the
cause in totality.
`Save the Girl Child’ campaign (Beti Bachavo Abhiyan): Public Movement for sensitizing
the society that no discrimination is made on gender basis.-The gender birth rates
were 1000/802 girls, which has rose to 1000/ 882 girls. By the year 2010, the rate
is targeted 1000/1000 girls.
The Kishori-Shakti Yojana, upgrading primary education, Jyotigram, free bus journey
for the girl students, and various steps are taken, as a result of it the girls
have won many awards and medals for their outstanding performance in education and
sports. Significant improvement is being noticed in the condition of anemia.
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Infrastructure
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Blueprint for Infrastructure in Gujarat – BIG 2020, envisages a total capital outlay
of Rs.3,57,468 crores and encompasses 11 broad sectors such as Power, Water and
Irrigation, Ports, Roads, Industrial Parks and SEZs, Urban Infrastructure, Gas,
Knowledge Corridors, Railways and Airports, Tourism and Telecom - Infrastructure
that enables growth and empowers people to accelerate on the path of progress and
prosperity. Already, Gujarat today has one of the best infrastructures in the country
with 11 airports, one international airport, an extensive rail network and a robust
road network. It has India’s highest tele-density, highest number of operational
ISPs, the longest optical fibre cable network in the country and above all GSWAN
– Gujarat State Wide Area Network – the largest IP based e-Governance network in
Asia Pacific. Gujarat is blessed with a coastline of over 1600 km, the longest in
the country, and is dotted with 41 ports. More than 98% villages in Gujarat are
connected with concrete roads. This excellent rural road connectivity is the best
in the country and translates into fast track growth.
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Education
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Focus on cent per cent enrollment of children and ensuring reduction in drop out
rates have been able to reverse the trend of high illiteracy rate. Then there is
the "Vidyadeep" yojana for providing insurance cover to all school going children.
For higher education, Gujarat has established five more universities. These include
Nirma University at Ahmedabad, DDU at Nadiad, DAIICT at Gandhinagar, Shyamji Krishna
Verma University at Kutch and Ganpat University at Mehsana. A National Law University
has also been established in Gandhinagar. Apart from this, four agricultural universities
have also been set up and have formed a network for collaborative research. Several
new engineering, pharmacy and technical colleges have been set up and this has led
to doubling of the intake capacity in the last five years. An IIT (Indian Institute
of Technology) too is being planned in Gujarat. To cater to the demands of a knowledge
based economy, new courses have been introduced to develop domain-specific human
resources. The stretch between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar is now being developed
as a knowledge corridor. Land has been allotted and several IT parks and centres
of excellence are taking shape here. All such measures for human resource developm
ent are expected to bring about a revolution in educational standards in Gujarat.
Gujarat Knowledge Society has been established to improve skills and employability
of the youth. What’s more, looking at the success of Public Private Participation
model reputed private sector companies have been engaged to manage Industrial Training
Institutes (ITIs). This will ensure industry-ready trained manpower.
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Healthcare and Nutrition
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Qualitative change has been brought in health services and health infrastructure
along with schemes like Chiranjeevi and Balbhog which are novel initiatives to ensure
a healthy mother and child. Improvement in the health and nutritional status of
the population has been one of the major thrust areas of the social development
programmes in the state. Over the years, Gujarat has developed good health infrastructure
and human resources. The State has initiated a wide variety of Public-Private Collaborations,
involving NGOs/Private Sector practitioners. No wonder, Gujarat is now emerging
as a global medical tourism destination. The WHO has appreciated Gujarat’s school
health program, under which 10 million primary school children are medically examined
every year. The state has recently initiated a novel scheme involving private gynaecologists
in providing services related to safe delivery of pregnant women primarily from
socio-economically weaker sections. The scheme called the Chiranjeevi Yojana, was
launched in December 2005. The beneficiaries under the scheme are the mothers from
poor families. Recently, this scheme bagged an international recognition in the
form of Asian Innovation Award at Singapore from Wall Street Journal and the Financial
Express. Under “Matru Vandana” private Gynaecologists provide free services to antenatal
mothers on 9th day of each month. Almost 1000 gynaecologists are working as Matru
Vandana Doctors.
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Information Technology
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Gujarat has the largest optical fibre wide area network in the whole of Asia, stretching
over as long as 50,000 km. This provides CM office and other Government functionaries
a platform to interact not only with the lowest-rung officers of the Government
all over the state but also with the people in rural areas through video conferencing.
A novel concept of SWAGAT has been introduced. Gujarat has made e-Governance functional
in all its 141 municipalities. The Citizen Facilitation Centres are now functional
in all the major centres of Gujarat. At the district level, taluka level and in
municipal areas, computerized civic centres have been established where the concept
of one-day governance has been implemented. This experiment has been further taken
up to the village level by establishing e-grams equipped with Computers and Internet
Connectivity. All 14,000 gram panchayat s have been made e-grams. The e-dhara project
for total computerization of land records has been extremely successful and widely
acclaimed. The other areas of e-Governance include electronic weigh bridges and
smart cards for driving licenses, online and roaming ration card system, online
filing of sales tax returns, connectivity between courts and jails, creation of
huge data base of youths available for employment, online availability of the Government
resolutions and forms in digital format, departmental websites disseminating information
on various Government schemes and activities etc. A number of awards have been bagged
for various e-governance initiatives.
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Poverty
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There are different groups of such people and each group requires a special way
to deal with. Going to the root of the problems they face, his empathetic heart
came out with the steps like issue of roaming ration cards, roaming school cards,
insurance cover for 3 lac handicapped, insurance cover for 12.5 million school children,
special housing colony for the snake charmers, betterment of the kite preparing
community and several other awe-inspiring ideas. The fact that Gujarat ranks first
in the country in the implementation of 20 point programme for poverty abolition
for the last four years in a row, speaks a lot beyond ranks and numbers. As per
the estimate of the Planning Commission of India, Gujarat will remain at the top
in achieving the targets of poverty abolition. In fact, the government has already
provided Housing to 46,263 below poverty line families at the cos t of Rs. 13672.94
lacs. In the BPL (below poverty line) survey 2002–07, conducted to identify beneficiaries
for rural development programmes, three new socio-economic parameters were included
in the survey, viz., households headed by widow, female dependent families and handicapped
members. This door-to-door survey covered 68.65 lac rural households of which 15.93%
were identified as extremely poor and 84.07% as poor. This new BPL list has now
been placed online and the selection of beneficiaries is `based on this list. This
list will be revised every year and online query of data has been made accessible
to all.
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Social justice
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The piling up of court cases is a nationwide problem and everybody, from the poorest
man to the highest authority, talks about ‘justice delayed is justice denied;’ but
it is only Gujarat that came out with an innovative way to improve the situation
by starting Evening Courts since November 2006. The initial response has been overwhelming.
Using the existing infrastructure, 67 such courts have already been made operational
and in a span of about 6 months, more than 1,16,000 cases have been disposed off.
The evening courts do not imply only additional working hours but also a system
which enables the common man to seek justice without wasting his working hours during
the day. In addition to this, the experiment of Lok Adalat (People’s Court) is also
gaining ground. More than one million cases have been disposed off during the year
2006.
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Women’s empowerment
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Another innovative approach is the Nari Adalat (Female Court). Women groups have
organized themselves into these informal judicial forums in order to redress the
grievances and cases of women through consultation and negotiation.
Right to have property for female members in the families.
Priority in allotting dwelling units under the Government schemes.Special privilege
for women purchasing property, stamp duty is abolished:
Around 4 lakh women now own the property on their names.
Social status for Anganwadi workers.
Mata Yashoda Awards gets Rise in Honorarium Rise of Rs 500 for Anganwadi workers,
Assistants get the rise of Rs 250/ per month.-13000 more
Sakhi Mandals are established; as many as 55000 Sakhi Mandals
are doing economic activities.
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Hindutva
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The Ideology of Hindutva which is propounded by RSS, and followed by Modi, offers
a room for all minorities on a condition of their whole hearted submission to the
supreme value of the nation in their lives. The nation is a vehicle of universal
truths and is not an entity above them. It teaches loyalty and devotion to the national
society in the national homeland under the image of the mother. The unity and solidarity
of the motherland taught to claim the highest sacrificial devotion from the citizen
body. Whoever enters into this spirit of devotion to the nation as a spiritual unity
of the land and people are Indians or Hindus in essence. The mental commitment should
be final and supreme. Hindutva or Cultural Nationalism presents the BJP's conception
of Indian nationhood, as explained in the following set of articles. It must be
noted that Hindutva is a nationalist, and not a religious concept.
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Minorities
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The Muslims and Christians have perfect freedom of worship, so long as they do not
destroy and undermine the faith and symbolism of the national society. They should
subordinate their exclusive claims for final and sole revelation vis-à-vis the national
society. They could bear witness to their faith in life and speech but they should
not indulge in any unfair and unspiritual modes of conversions. The national identity
requires that the whole of the national society, including minorities, should share
in the best values of the past. They should appreciate national Dharma – the code
of ethical principles and ways of life. The cultural history, they should all give
their mind and hearts whole-heartedly to an appreciation of the best types. Rama
and Krishna may be appreciated by non-Hindus as secular examples while the Hindus
will see them as full spiritual exemplars, or avat ars.
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Gujaratis
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The future belongs to India. And Gujaratis have their role to play in it. The entire
country is looking at us and at our development. Let us resolve and dedicate ourselves
to build a Swarnim (golden) Gujarat. I see in the eyes of the people a dream of
a Swarnim Gujarat. The year 2010 would be memorable as the state celebrates its
golden jubilee and it would mirror the sublime height Gujarat is set to achieve
in years to come. Appeal to the people of Gujarat to help build a ‘golden state’
as it approaches the 50th year of its formation in two years and urge the citizens
of Gujarat to help build a “Swarnim Gujarat” by 2010.
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