“This government has decided to do everything by flouting rules and regulations. We do not expect this government to work legally. The decision in Kadam’s case will be taken in court,” said Shiv Sena (UBT) leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut. (File)
Stating that Prime Minister Narendra Modi resorts to blatant lies in his speech in Parliament, Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut said on Sunday that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had given the slogan ‘Aaram Haram Hai’ and appealed to countrymen to become independent and self-reliant.
While replying to the discussion on the motion of thanks on the President’s address in Lok Sabha, PM Modi said on Monday that former PMs Nehru and Indira Gandhi believed that Indians were lazy, lacked intelligence, and were given to complacency or hopelessness.
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In his weekly column Rokhthok in the party mouthpiece Saamana, Raut said, “PM Modi lied to the nation. He needs to visit Kedarnath for ‘tapasya’ and self-introspection. Modi resorts to lying to people.”
Raut said that while PM Modi spoke for 60 minutes in Parliament, “he sidetracked the main issues”. “He devoted maximum time to attacking the Congress. In one statement, he said Pandit Nehru thought Indians to be lazy, and also spoke about Indira Gandhi. Such a statement is nothing but an insult to hard-working Indians,” he said.
Raut said Nehru had coined the slogan ‘Aaram Haram Hai’ during his 1959 speech at the Red Fort. “Nehru believed that every citizen should put in hard work to ensure the nation’s progress. In the same speech, Nehru had appealed to the country to become independent and self-reliant. The slogan of self-reliance has been stolen by Modi,” he said.
Quoting Nehru, Raut said, “The then PM had said in his speech that in India that — ‘we are not used to hard work. It is not our fault, habits form due to situations. But the fact is we don’t work as hard as people in Europe or Japan or China or Russia do… These communities became prosperous not by magic, but by hard work and intelligence. We too can progress by adopting the path of hard work and intelligent thinking. There is no alternative to hard work’.”
“Then we can say Modi too has made people lazy, and into slaves by giving 80 crore citizens 5 kg grains for free. Indians are looking for employment and Modi wants them to spend time in the darshan of Lord Ram,” Raut wrote.
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Citing an instance of a rush for jobs in Pune, Raut wrote that 3,500 people had lined up for one post in an IT company in the city.
“The press in Maharashtra highlighted the plight of the unemployed. And this is happening because our PM has handed over PSUs, which provide jobs, to his friends. These PSUs were set up by Pandit Nehru, and are being destroyed by Modi in his ‘Amrut Kaal’. As a result, in the last 10 years, unemployed youth have turned to criminal activities. Even a progressive state like Maharashtra is not an exception to this.”
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More
