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Prime Minister Narendra Modi (File Photo) Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Thursday bureaucrats should abandon negativity and never compromise on the unity and integrity of the country. Addressing bureaucrats on the occasion of 15th Civil Service Day in Delhi, the Prime Minister urged officers to do everything, even at local levels, for strengthening the unity and integrity of India.
“No matter what we do, be it at the local levels and in villages, never lose sight of the fact that the unity and integrity of the country are supreme. Whatever system we create, whatever decisions we take, always ask yourselves whether they strengthen the unity and integrity of India. India first, the nation first should be the benchmark of our work,” said Modi.
The prime minister said that the next 25 years is a landmark journey for India as it goes towards 100 years of Independence. “Our Amrit Kaal is not just to laud the last seven decades. We may have gone from 70-75 (years of Independence) in routine. But from 75 to 2047, India at 100, cannot be routine,” he said.
Citing a discussion he had many years ago in the United States before he held any public office, Modi said no society in the world, believers or atheists, has the courage to change the tradition followed after death.
“I told them that traditionally the Hindus used to consider being cremated in the fire of sandalwood by the banks of the Ganges to be pious. That same Hindu adapted to the electric crematorium without any hesitation. There is no better example than this of the evolving mindset of the society,” he said, adding that it is now the government’s responsibility to give pace to that tradition of adapting to the changing needs of the time.
Speaking of the mindset of change, Modi said that India’s startups have set up 14 unicorns in 2022. Modi said that the government has abolished 1,500 obsolete laws in the first five years of the NDA and that the Cabinet Secretary has taken up the task of identifying and ending the provision of imprisonment in old, obsolete laws. “There is a law that says if the toilet of a factory is not whitewashed periodically, then that will attract imprisonment. Our job is to free the people of this garbage and burden of compliance,” he said.
Modi implored the bureaucracy to break out of the mentality of indifference and live freely. “During last eight years, many big things with behavioural change have taken place,” he said, adding that along with urging the people to change their behaviour towards old customs, we should implement them first in our own offices and homes.
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