New Delhi, Feb 17,2023: Emphasising on the Centre’s pro-poor and development agenda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that the government has reimagined and reinvented various aspects of governance.

Addressing the Economic Times Global Business Summit, Modi said that the most significant part of governance has been that the Centre had “reimagined and reinvented for the poor” even as “many are busy in the relaunch of the same product without reimagination”, he said while taking a dig at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

“People in the earlier governments liked ‘mai-baap’ culture. This is the reason why there was a distance between government and people at that time,” PM Modi said while addressing dignitaries at the summit.

“The poor people should have bank accounts, and also the rights to seek loans… they should have access to toilets and cooking gas. Such thoughts were not in place earlier,” he added.

“Now, we have the aim to empower the poor,” the Prime Minister added.

“Our government, through direct benefit transfer and other schemes, has transferred Rs 28 lakh crore to the poor,” he said.

“When we came to power in 2014, sanitation coverage in the country was less than 40 per cent. Now, the coverage has increased to 100 per cent. After 70 years of Independence, three crore rural households had tap connections. Now, we have given access of new tap connections to eight crore rural households in the last three and a half years,” Modi highlighted, while listing the various developmental works undertaken in the past nine years of the BJP-led NDA government.

He further said that the government has converted backward districts to aspirational districts.

“We have also reimagined the infrastructure strategy of the country. We are reimagining the infrastructure mapping on top priority,” PM Modi said while underlining the government’s focus on developing a big ticket infrastructure system.

As many as 128 air routes which were earlier restricted for defence have now been opened.

In the last nine years, mobile manufacturing units have increased, Internet data rates have dropped and 40 per cent of digital payments around the world are done in India, he said.

On tax reforms, PM Modi said that the government has simplified the process of tax payment.

“People are now more eager to pay taxes because of the trust in the government. When taxpayers are assured that the tax they are paying is being used for the country, then they are more likely to pay their taxes. I am thankful to the people for trusting the government. Our trust in them will only increase their trust in us,” he said in conclusion.