On 18 December 2022, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw visited Bengaluru for an interaction with a cross section of business and media professionals. I had the opportunity to be part of the august gathering at the Shangri-La Hotel.
Mr. Ashwini Vaishnaw came at around 6.30 PM and apologized for being three minutes late! He then started his powerpoint presentation.
It is rare to see politicians who use slides to explain about their work. It shows their seriousness towards reaching out to the public and also shows that they look at public as an important stakeholder in their work. Mr. Ashwini did just that. He started taking us through the plans that he is working on and the progress made. The Minister was basically presenting his progress report to common people like us.
He first started talking about the plans that Prime Minister Narendra Moodi had for building top class railway stations. Everybody in audience were floored looking at some of the pictures of the proposed railway stations for Delhi, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Gandhinagar, Chennai Egmore, Ernakulam, Madurai, Bangalore Cantonment, Yeshwantpur, Rani Kamalapati, Gwalior, Prayagraj, New Jalpaiguri and Jammu Tawi. These were not plans for just a railway station but city centers which included roof plaza equipped lavishly with food courts and lounges. One would easily mistake them for airports and that is the level of thinking PM Modi and Mr. Ashwini have for next gen railway stations.
Ashwini narrated his experience with his tough boss, Narendra Modi. He mentioned that when he first took the plan for the railway stations to Modi, he listened very keenly, a great listener that he was. Finally, he rejected the plan saying this was catering to today’s times and he wanted these stations to be catering to the needs 50 years from now. That was the kind of challenge put across by his boss to him. The team then went back to the drawing board and returned to the Prime Minister after 4 months with a fresh plan. The PM eventually was satisfied and gave the green signal. The pictures and blueprint shown by Ashwini were a testimony to the great vision of the leader. This narration left the audience awed.
Ashwini summed it up giving the below data points:
Masterplans under preparation – 134
Design approved – 70
Tenders issued recently – 51
Work in progress – 48
Ashwini then moved on to trains. He showed actual pictures of Vande Bharat trains launched so far, Sabarmati-Ahmedabad-Mumbai (30 Sep 2022), Himachal Vande Bharat (13 Oct 2022), Mysuru-Bengaluru-Chennai (11 Nov 2022) and Nagpur-Raipur-Bilaspur (11 Dec 2022). He then stressed on the point that easy and usual way would have been to import the train parts but PM Modi was very particular in making this in India. With the excellent engineering skills that we have in India, this feat was accomplished and Ashwini expressed how proud he was of our Indian engineers. He passionately talked about the chassis design as he was an engineer himself and how the noise reduction and quality of ride was ensured for public. He then asked who all have travelled in Vande Bharat and requested one member randomly from audience to share his experience. The answer was – “it was a great experience indeed”. Ashwini then moved to talking about the insfrastructure built for the bullet train and the best in class machinery used in the process.
Ashwini’s next topic was the semi-conductor manufacturing opportunity that India was taking up in a big way. He also noted that India was now the second largest manufacturer of phones in India. He proudly talked about the 5G services launch. He then shifted gears to Indian economy remaining the bright spot in South Asia as reported by The Economist and several others with 7% growth and 6.9% inflation with growth being better than USA, China, Japan, Germany, UK and France. The cost of living is the West is a lot worse compared to India. He noted that India followed an investment strategy and is a preferred partner globally today. Investment has been ramped up to 19-20 lakh Crores per quarter. Investment as a percentage of GDP has grown from 27% to 31. Bank credit growth has been highest in many years. Capacity utilization in factories has increased. Compared to prior Congress governments, the inflation is much better under BJP regime, he noted. He added that the unemployment rate is lower in BJP governed states. Formal employment additions are nearly 15 lakhs per month based on new provident fund enrolments. He ended his 50 minutes presentation with the comment that Indian economy being comfortably within 6-8 growth band, is set for emerging as the world’s economic powerhouse.
Everyone was just blown away with such a sincere reportage by a sitting Minister. This shows the level of professionalism and honesty that is actually existing today in the Center under PM Modi. The fact that he has inducted some great ministers like Jaishankar and Ashwini Vaishnaw as lateral additions speaks volumes of his tireless effort to make India great. It can be confidently said that the Railways, Telecom and IT sectors are in safe hands.
Click here to subscribe to The Commune on Telegram and get the best stories of the day delivered to you personally.