Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who has openly declared his intent to move to the Capital of the next general election, was all charms and good governance salesman at two events here on Monday.
At his first engagement hosted by FICCI’s Ladies Organisation, Mr. Modi devoted entirely to the theme of women power and need to harness it. At the second, first Think India Dialogue of Network18, he put up an impressive performance on his pet theme in recent months — minimum government and maximum governance.
At both events, he repeatedly referred to experiments of his government to ‘empower women’ as well as shape the government towards the sole objective of governance.
Mr. Modi contended that governance was victim of the sole priority of ruling parties to retain power. “Every year there is some election or the other. A party in power is always hedging on decision-making, fearing adverse impact in the polls. In the process, decisions are delayed, deferred and ultimately shelved.”
Elaborating on more governance and less government, he said: “I don’t mean job cuts when I talk about minimum government. Government is about outlay and governance is about outcome. Governments in India only talk about outlay and not outcome,” he said. “The P4 model should be adopted. People-public-private partnership model is the need of the hour.”
Needles Rahul
At the FICCI event, Mr. Modi took a dig at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for “not rescuing women left in the lurch.” Narrating the success story of Jasoo Bahen Ka Pizza, he criticised Mr. Gandhi, saying media would now seek to hunt her down whether it was someone like Kalavati, wife of a debt-ridden Maharashtra farmer who committed suicide, whom the latter visited and talked of in the Lok Sabha, but not heard of again. “You’ll not find her. She died five years ago. But her labour has captured a big market share pushing even the likes of Pizza Hut to the fringe.”
