At rally in poorest belt of Odisha, Modi slams Cong’s promise to wage war on poverty

Bhawanipatna: On a day Congress released its manifesto and promised to wage war on poverty by providing Rs 72,000 annually as cash support to the poor, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday criticized the party for using the poor only as a vote bank. Addressing an election rally in Bhawanipatna in the Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput (KBK) region, Modi said, “Whenever there is an election, Congress starts talking about poverty. This doesn’t solve anything.”
He referred to Congress’s ‘old links’ with the poverty-stricken area, saying former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had, standing on the soil of Kalahandi, said that of every rupee that the government sent to the poor, only 15 paise actually reached them.

“It is on this ground that Congress had accepted its failure (to end poverty). A doctor diagnosing a disease but offering no treatment is of no use. Rajiv knew the disease but could offer no cure. Modi has offered a cure,” he said, adding, “Manmohan Singh increased the money reaching the poor from 15 to 16 paise. We ensured that all 100 paise sent by the Centre reached those in need.”

Unlike his recent rallies, Modi refrained from speaking on Balakot and terrorism in KBK — often used as shorthand for the worst depredations poverty has wrecked on mankind — in his 40-minute speech. The region — comprising eight districts in Odisha — lags behind on all accepted development parameters, from migration woes to malnutrition, high infant mortality to low school enrolment.

The desperately poor region has been visited by almost all top Congress leaders, from Indira Gandhi to Rajiv to Sonia Gandhi. Congress president Rahul Gandhi himself visited Bhawanipatna in February this year. Even non-Congress prime ministers like Chandrasekhar and H D Deve Gowda have visited the region with development on their lips.

In 1993, Narasimha Rao flew to Amjhari village in Kalahandi district to see the situation on the ground. The visit had led to the announcement of the central KBK plan for the integrated development of the region. In 1984, Rajiv had rushed to Amlapali under Nuapada district (then part of Kalahandi) to visit Phanus Punji, a poor woman who had sold her sister-in-law Banita for Rs 40 and a saree; a case that had shocked the world into silence.

Modi also attacked the BJD government in the state, describing it as an extension of Congress. “Parties like Congress and BJD conspire to keep the poor of the country poor; they deceive them. Because of this, many Dana Majhis don’t get an ambulance,” he said, in a reference to 2016’s headline-grabbing case of a tribal who had had to walk home from the Kalahandi district headquarters hospital with his wife’s body on his shoulders because he could not afford a hearse. Asking the people to vote out the Naveen government, the Prime Minister said, “Nineteen years is a long time; a child will have become a voter by this time.”

Reiterating his earlier remark that the election results in Odisha would surprise the country, Modi said “The state is going to do in 2019 what Uttar Pradesh did in 2017 and Tripura, in 2018,” he said.

The Prime Minister also recalled his association with Kalahandi as coordinator of then BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi’s country-wide ‘Ekta Yatra’. He said he had had the opportunity to accompany Joshi to Kalahandi.