No 'bandh' for Narendra Modi

While the leaders and members of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were out on the streets to enforce nationwide bandh on Thursday, chief minister Narendra Modi, BJP’s poster boy was busy addressing the ‘Industry Responsive Skill Convention’ at Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar. Some of the participating leaders from the industry also talked about zero level man-days loss in the state.

In his inaugural speech, CM expressed resolve for giving priority to skill development in the youth through public-private-partnership (PPP) model to cater to the needs of industries. He said the state’s Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) have already signed 119 Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with the industries for various skill development programmes. On this occasion, as many as 26 MoUs were signed between ITIs and industries.
“Even though our country has the highest population of youth, we need to empower them so that they can emerge as a growth engine for global economy. Keeping this in view, we have launched programmes for providing ‘hard skills’ and ‘soft skills’ training to the youngsters,” he said. He also highlighted the state’s programmes such as iCreate, SCOPE and eMPOWER.

After addressing the urban professional youth and industry representatives at Mahatma Mandir, Modi went to Tarnetar fair in Surendranagar district to address the rural gathering. He made an announcement of constructing 25 lakh pucca houses in the villages which can be seen as a counter to Congress’ announcement of providing ‘Ghar nu Ghar’ to the people below poverty line (BPL). Modi gave away cash prizes to the winners of cattle-rearing competition and rural Olympics at the fair.

The government has now allowed sarpanchs to use Rs5 lakh for the village- level development works. This will result in all-round development of villages, said the CM. Talking about the state government’s pro-people initiatives, Modi said the government has built 16 lakh houses for poor during the last decade.