Congress pushed country into misery: PM's 'Hindu growth jibe' in 12-year speech
Marking 12 years of the NDA government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India's slow-growth era was wrongly labelled the "Hindu growth rate" and should instead
Marking 12 years of the NDA government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India's slow-growth era was wrongly labelled the "Hindu growth rate" and should instead have been called the "Congress growth rate". He alleged that Congress governments pushed the country into "helplessness, misery and an inferiority complex" through years of policy and governance failures. Addressing a meeting of NDA leaders in Delhi after becoming India's longest continuously serving elected Prime Minister, PM Modi said one of the NDA government's biggest achievements was freeing the country from what he called the legacy of Congress rule. Read Full Story "A major success of the NDA's 12 years in power is that the country has been liberated from the vicious cycle of Congress. The country was made to feel that development in India happens slowly, that rapid development is not possible in India.
Very cleverly, a name was given to slow development โ 'Hindu growth rate'," he said. The Prime Minister alleged that Congress governments had conditioned Indians to believe that rapid development was impossible, and that economic progress could only take place at a slow pace. He argued that the term unfairly shifted the blame for policy failures onto India's Hindu majority while shielding the Congress from accountability. "The working style was of Congress, the responsibility was of Congress, the failure was of Congress, but the stigma was put on the country's large Hindu population. In reality, this bad culture should have been named 'Congress growth rate'," he said. He asserted that the Congress era was marked by a lack of governance, policy direction, intent and decisive action, resulting in slow growth and public disillusionment. PM Modi contrasted that period with the NDA's tenure, saying the alliance had restored public faith in government and demonstrated that development could be delivered at scale through political stability and clear intent.
Recalling the NDA's victory in 2014, PM Modi said he had then remarked that a new sense of hope had emerged among ordinary Indians after years of disappointment. "When the NDA won in 2014, I said that a new hope had dawned for the common citizen of the country. The people of the country entrusted us with their trust after the betrayal of the Congress," he said. Expressing satisfaction over the NDA's performance, PM Modi said the alliance had strengthened that trust over the past 12 years. "The rising sun of hope in 2014 has today transformed into a ray of renewed confidence. For the first time, people have seen that when a government is run with the right intentions, development also happens at a rapid pace," he said. The Prime Minister cited the lifting of more than 250 million people out of poverty during the NDA's tenure as evidence that the government's policies were moving in the right direction.
