Invoking the spirit of national unity and federalism, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday appealed to the BJP-led Centre to work in collaboration with “progressive State governments” such as Delhi’s for the development of the nation.
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He offered the Centre the Delhi government’s expertise in offering free welfare schemes in the education and health sectors across the country and expressed readiness to cooperate for “the greater good of the public”.
The Delhi unit of the BJP scoffed at the appeal, rejecting his claims about massive improvements in education and health in the Capital.
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Reiterating that free welfare services being extended to citizens in sectors such as education and health need not be termed freebies, Mr. Kejriwal said providing these to all Indians on a war footing was what the nation needs to become “number one” globally.
“To make India a rich superpower, we’ll have to make every Indian rich and powerful. Most government schools across the country are in very bad condition even though 17 crore children study in them,” the Chief Minister said. “If we make government schools better… then every child will make their family rich.”
He explained that countries such as the United States, England and Denmark were rich because they gave good education to every child and not the other way around. Giving good education, he said, was not a freebie since the 130 crore people of the country were ready to sacrifice a meal every day but not compromise with their children’s education. The case was similar when it came to the health sector, he added.
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“The Delhi government spends an average of ₹2,000 per capita annually on free health care; to scale it up for 130 crore Indians, we need barely ₹2.5 lakh crore. They [the Central government] think that a ₹5 lakh insurance cover is good health care, but what is the point of such a scheme when someone’s sick but not hospitalised?” Mr. Kejriwal said.
India, he argued, needed hospitals, not insurance cards.
“We need to transform all the government schools in the country and build a lot of more of them, regularise all contractual teachers and conduct mass recruitment to fill up vacancies and provide quality training to them. These four steps are the road map for India becoming a rich and developed country,” he said.
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“Today, I am offering the Central government our services. We can keep the politics aside. All of us who are in power and 130 crore Indians can get united to revamp all the government schools in the country. And you should also stop calling it a freebie,” he summed up. Delhi BJP president Adesh Gupta alleged that 32 of the 38 government hospitals in Delhi did not provide heart treatment facilities and Science was not taught in almost 700 city schools.
“If Delhi’s hospitals are of the best quality, why do Kejriwal and his Ministers and MLAs get their treatment done in private hospitals at government expense?” he said, claiming that the Delhi government had not spent 60% of the budget it had allocated for health in the last eight years.
Leader of the Opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri said not a single new school had opened in Delhi in the last seven years. “In fact, 16 government schools were closed and dozens of schools were merged with other schools. The Kejriwal government could not build a single new hospital in Delhi. He should not try to mislead the public based on lies,” he said.