There are variety of problems that the government needs to address, especially poverty and the increasing number of suicides by farmers who are not able to repay the debts and finding it difficult to meet daily needs.
According to the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal (MGD) programme, 270 millions or 21.9 % people out of 1.2 billion Indians lived below poverty line of $1.25 in 2011-2012.
In the last 20 years, nearly 3,00,000 farmers have ended their lives by ingesting pesticides or by hanging themselves. Maharashtra state tops the list with 60,000 farmer suicides.
The recent government data says that about 52 % of the country’s agricultural households are indebted. This stratum of people had much expectation from the changed government and was very much optimistic that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would help them in overcoming their everyday difficulties.
But it seems Prime Minister Narendra Modi has altogether other priorities to take care of and hence he keeps on flying to different countries, signs agreements with them, holds meetings with businessmen there with anticipation that foreign countries will invest more in India.
It is obvious the expenditure of the same magnitude will follow along with such large number of foreign tours. Information obtained under Right to Information (RTI) Act application has revealed that Modi’s two days visit to Seychelles and Mauritius in March 2015 incurred Rs 2.66 crore.
Ministry of External Affairs provided the information to activist Saleem Beg on June 23. The Ministry of
External Affairs, East & Southern Africa Division said the amount spent on Modi’s Seychelles visit on 10-11 March 2015 is Rs 1,28,61,928. It also said that the amount spent on Modi’s Mauritius visit on March 11-12, 2015 stands at Rs 1,37,92,690 – making total amount Modi’s tour to the two countries incurred as Rs 2,66,54,618.
The reply received from the Ministry of External Affairs clarifies that this is only a part of the total expenditure incurred on the visits as other expenditure data is not available in their records.
In addition to this, PMOIndia government website lists that his visit to Bhutan last year on June 15-16 incurred Rs 2.45 crore.
Modi spent 54 days abroad in his first year of office visiting 18 different countries in five different continents. He visited 12 Asian countries for 28 days followed by two North American countries for nine days. Back home, he toured 17 states in all spending a total of 63 days in domestic travel. In all 24 days out of this was for un-official reasons (election campaigns in Maharashtra and Haryana).
According to the revised budgetary estimates, Modi government in its first year incurred a travel bill of Rs 317 crore – about Rs 59 crore more than the Rs 258 crore the UPA-II cabinet had spent in its last year in office (2013-14).
This travel bill includes expenditure on travel by cabinet ministers, ministers of state and former PMs and maintenance of aircraft used by VVIPs: the ones used by Prime Minister, President and Vice President.
One thing which is always common in Modi’s foreign tours is that he never misses to visit a temple or Hindu heritage site in that country. In Mauritius he paid homage to the valiant apravasis and also visited Ganga talao. As soon as he visited there, he recalled the River Ganges that flows through Varanasi.
Although, Modi might be on the bigger agenda of strengthening ties with foreign countries and might also involve attempt to bring more industries to India but the poor people including farmers here who are not meeting daily needs and are being compelled to commit suicide are feeling cheated after voting him to the power in expectation of change.
The number of suicide by the farmers in Maharashtra is exponentially increasing as they are not able to repay the debt amount due upon them. Such farmers are vary of Modi’s visits to foreign countries and say he should meet them and try to solve their problems first.
Modi’s foreign tours have been routinely objected by opposition parties who say the PM should pay more homage to the Indian cities and villages in order to witness their problems, listen to them, find solutions and fulfill tall election promises he had made to them.
It is unanticipated that Modi spends crores of rupees on his scores of foreign trips when the common people, most important of them the farmers, are suffering. Whatever might be his resolve behind such trips but the people on ground who were hopeful of Modi’s magic are still waiting for the achche din to come!!
(This appeared in TwoCircles.net on August 13, 2015)