Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh, Congress Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha Capt Amarinder Singh today asked the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to spell out to the nation as what new and fresh he had achieved for the country from his just concluded US visit.
“Hype and hyperbole apart, the Indo-US strategic partnership is a long and continuous process and it would be wrong to relate it with one single event or one single visit of a Prime Minister to that country”, he remarked in a statement issued here today, while adding, “nation was curious to know as what were your substantial achievements during the current visit which the previous government had not been able to do”.
The senior Congress leader observed, “as the dust starts to settle down over the PM’s recent US visit, it emerges that at best Mr Modi has been able to get a commitment over the continuation of the strategic partnership between India and the US built up by previous UPA government”.
He pointed out, whether it is taking further the Indo-US Nuclear Deal, which incidentally Mr Modi’s party BJP opposed so vigorously and brought a no-confidence motion against the UPA government over it, or announcing to set up an Indo-US Interagency to speed up setting of US built nuclear reactors in India, there is nothing new that has come out of this visit.
He disclosed that for building up strategic partnership in defence, the ‘Defence Framework Agreement’ was signed between India and the US way back in 2005 under the UPA regime. Besides, he added, President Obama had declared India as a “Strategic Partner” in 2012 because of the trust and confidence built up by the UPA government. “We would like to know, if there is something more that has been done during your much hyped visit to that country”, he said.
Referring to the investment in defence production, Capt Amarinder pointed out, this again had already been done by the UPA as there were already some manufacturers like the Boeing, Lockheed Martin and GE in India. “Let us see how much fresh investment has been promised and how much is delivered”, he remarked.
Asserting that Mr Modi’s stand on economy was vague at best and self contradictory at worst, he pointed out, while on the one hand he is extending invite to the investors abroad, at home his government and his party have vigorously been opposing several reforms like the foreign direct investment in the retail sector.
The former Punjab Chief Minister remarked, “it will be wrong to assume or attribute the success of Indo-US relations to one Madison Square ‘rock-star show’ or one Presidential dinner as this was not the first such dinner hosted for an Indian Prime Minister and nor was it going to be the last one, may be this was just too much glorified and glamourised”.
He said, the Coke and the Pepsi alone were not going to solve India’s problems as it required heavy investment in the manufacturing sector for which the country needs to go a long way. “You can’t go inviting investors abroad while opposing FDI (in retail) at home”, he remarked.
