It is heartening and inspiring in equal measure to see that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of a new India is no longer bandied about just during election campaigns but has well and truly become a living reality, manifesting on the ground in a multitude of ways.
Earlier this year, while attending an event marking the birth anniversary of Lord Devnarayan (a deity revered by the Gurjar community) at a village in Rajasthan’s Bhilwara district, Prime Minister Modi went a little further and said that this new India is already correcting the mistakes made in previous decades while the rest of the world is watching with great hope.
There can be no denying that he is the architect of this new India. As a common saying goes, “Change starts from within”. From the kind of people in the Union Cabinet, or at the Prime Minister’s Office or on his Economic Advisory Council, essentially those who are part of Team Modi, it is easy to see how that change is being effected.
One of the brightest examples of that is 52-year-old Sanjeev Sanyal, an Oxford-educated and internationally acclaimed economist who cut his teeth in the financial markets and held important positions at Deutsche Bank (Europe’s largest bank) for many years before being appointed as Principal Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Finance.
Now, as a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, he is one of the leading voices that are calling out the West on its double standards in shaping global narratives, especially those that are unfavourable to India, through various agencies. With his vast expertise in finance and economics, he identifies and openly shreds apart studies and surveys that have been skewed to support the West’s agenda and manipulate other countries – mostly from the developing world – into toeing its line.
Prime Minister Modi’s commitment to building a new India for and by the youth is also clearly reflected in the increasingly vibrant start-up and innovation ecosystem in the country. There are more than 80,000 recognised start-ups and well over 110 unicorns in India, which are together facilitating an exponential rise in employment opportunities for young Indians.
One of the greatest homegrown success stories in the world of entrepreneurship (one with an Odisha connection) over the past decade is that of Asish Mohapatra. A year after Modi-led-BJP won the 2014 general elections, Cuttack-born Mohapatra started out with OfBusiness, an industrial goods and services procurement company. And within the next six years, that startup became a unicorn that is currently valued at US$5 billion.
There is no doubt that Mohapatra, an IIT Kharagpur alumni who also holds an MBA from Indian School of Business (ISB) is a rare talent with a never-say-die attitude. But it might be worth considering whether he could have made it so big – as the owner of two unicorns – in such little time had he been living in a country where the government was not committed enough to helping businesses start and grow.
Now, there is no dearth of talent in India. UK-based billionaire businessman Biswajit Patnaik – who was born and educated in Odisha and recently made national headlines for his record-breaking donation of Rs 250 crore towards the construction of the first Jagannath temple in Britain – is living proof of that.
Under the kind of leadership that the Prime Minister Modi is providing and the work that Team Modi is doing, the sky is the limit for this new India.
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