India's trust surplus visible in its people, their efforts, says PM Modi as he shares stage with Sharad Pawar
Aditi Tandon
New Delhi, August 1
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said India has transitioned from being a trust deficit country to a trust surplus country with the growing self-confidence visible in its people and their enterprise and endeavours.
He was speaking in Pune after receiving the Lokmanya Tilak National Award for national service.
गला भर आया ! 🥹 आनंदाचे अश्रू…
The joy, cheering, enthusiasm, happiness, and urge to get that one glimpse of Him..
Tears of gratefulness and joy is all we have at the end of this video.
Such heart-warming visuals, speaking so much about one of the greatest blessings India has -… pic.twitter.com/Nfb1rQxKw2AdvertisementSpeaking at the Lokmanya Tilak National Award Ceremony in Pune. https://t.co/DOk5yilFkg
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 1, 2023
— Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) August 1, 2023
NCP founder and opposition veteran Sharad Pawar conferred the award on Modi in a rare show of bipartisanship, which irked the rest of the ruling BJP’s rival camp, including the Congress and Shiv Sena UBT.
In his acceptance speech, PM Modi saluted the life of Lokmanya Tilak and also narrated an incident involving India’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Tilak.
“When Sardar Patel became the Ahmedabad municipal corporation chief he decided to erect a statue of Lokmanya Tilak in Victoria Park which the British had built in 1897. Sardar Patel challenged the entire authority of British Raj in pre independence era to erect the statue of a leading revolutionary and said he would quit his post rather than renege on his decision. Today if we have to change the name of alocal road from that of a foreigner to that of a national hero some people raise stiff resistance and lose their sleep,” the PM said also hailing Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar as someone who was among the many youth Tilak nurtured as soldiers for the Indian freedom movement.
Noting that no nation could progress in an atmosphere of trust deficit, the PM said India’s trust surplus was visible in its people and their efforts.
Saluting Lokmanya Tilak for infusing a self-doubting nation with the confidence of freedom with the slogan of swaraj at a time when the British declared Indians as unfit to rule themselves, PM said, “When people had lost all hope of freedom Lokmanya Tilak inspired them with confidence that freedom will come. He believed in India’s history, culture and capacity and broke the British perpetrated myth that Indians were lowly,” said the PM, adding that the world today was seeing a future in India and the Indian capacity was peaking.
It is because of Indian capacity and the decisions India took in the last nine years that we are now the world’s fifth top economy, he said.
The PM also said that all Indians were looking at the Amrit Kaal of independence marking the years up to the centenary of freedom in 2047 all Indians as “kartavya kaal.”
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