Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday returned home after a six-day foreign tour and got into campaign mode straightaway, addressing three events where he patted himself on the back, claiming the world was “listening to India” on his watch.
Modi’s plane touched down at Delhi around 5am. A little later, the Prime Minister addressed an audience of BJP leaders and supporters who had gathered outside the airport early in the morning to welcome him back. Among those present was party president J.P. Nadda.
Modi underlined that not only Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese but a former Premier and Opposition members of the country attended an event held in his honour by the local Indian community in Sydney.
“This was the atmosphere of democracy — that everyone joined in the Indian community’s programme. Everyone accorded respect and it was not about Modi’s glory but about India’s strength,” he told the crowd.
Modi’s comments came against the backdrop of a decision by 19 Opposition parties to boycott Sunday’s inauguration by Modi of the new Parliament building.
The Prime Minister claimed he had spent every moment of his three-nation trip talking about India and working for its betterment.
Modi said the “world is listening to India because people here elected a majority government”.
In his welcome speech, Nadda said: “Modiji’s governance model has been appreciated the world over…. US President Joe Biden asking for Modiji’s autograph in itself shows the charisma of Modiji’s leadership and the changing picture of India under him.”
When, a couple of hours later, Modi inaugurated a Dehradun-Delhi Vande Bharat Express train through videoconferencing, the BJP ecosystem held it up as an example of how hard the Prime Minister works.
At the inauguration, Modi said India was attracting the world’s attention to the way it was strengthening its economy and combating poverty.
The rollout of the Vande Bharat Express trains is being lauded as a technological achievement. However, railway sources said the ones inaugurated so far by Modi — hurriedly — fell short of their billing as semi-high-speed trains.
While the trains have a top speed of 160kmph, they have been travelling at an average speed of 64kmph — instead of the expected 90-100kmph — because of poor tracks, among other reasons, railway sources said.
The train inaugurated on Thursday and several others rolled out recently are smaller, eight-coach versions of the standard 16-coach train. This is because, the sources said, not enough coaches have been manufactured.
They added that the railways were struggling to meet the government’s target of rolling out 75 Vande Bharat trains by August 15 this year. Less than 20 Vande Bharat trains have so far been inaugurated.
Later in the day, Modi virtually addressed another event, named “Assam Rozgar Mela”, held by Assam’s BJP government as part of its two-year celebrations.
“Today, India is rapidly modernising its infrastructure. New highways, expressways and railway lines are being built,” Modi said.
“Crores of rupees are being spent on infrastructure, on generating jobs and on increasing self-employment.”
According to the private think tank, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the unemployment rate in India has risen steadily from 7.14 per cent in January this year to 7.45, 7.8 and 8.11 per cent in February, March and April, respectively. The figure was 8.3 per cent last December.
