Mumbai: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said that speaking Hindi makes her “shudder” and she speaks the language with hesitation. Speaking at an event organized by Hindi Vivek Patrika, Sitharaman referred to the previous speaker’s announcement that her speech would be in Hindi.
“Addressing the audience in Hindi makes me shudder,” said a candid Sitharaman, explaining the circumstances that have led to this situation. Sitharaman said she was born and attended college in Tamil Nadu, which was in the midst of a movement against Hindi and also saw violent protests against Hindi.
The Union cabinet minister claimed that students who opted for Hindi or Sanskrit as a second language, even those appearing in the merit list, were not given scholarships by the state government because of the language of their choice.
Sitharaman said it is difficult for a person to learn a new language after becoming an adult, but she can learn Telugu, the mother tongue of her husband, but cannot take up Hindi due to past incidents.
“I speak Hindi with a lot of ‘sankoch’ (hesitation),” she said. However, the Finance Minister continued to speak in Hindi and ended the entire speech, which went on for more than 35 minutes, in Hindi.
Sitharaman said India could have already ranked as the fifth largest economy in the world, but for the imported philosophy of socialism that relied on centralized planning.
He termed the economic reforms carried out by the then Congress government of 1991 as “half-reforms” (half-reforms) where the economy was opened not in the right way but according to the strictness imposed by the IMF.
There was no progress until BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee assumed the Prime Minister’s post and his focus on building infrastructure, roads and mobile telephony helped us a lot. Ten more years went by after the corrupt UPA government came to power, where the focus was on making personal gains and leaving behind the interests of the country, he claimed.
He said the UPA government put the economy in crisis and India became a part of the fragile five. The other economies of the vulnerable five were Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia.
Sitharaman said that after ascending to the post of PM, Narendra Modi introduced fundamental path-breaking reforms, including the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme, which ensured transparency in public distribution without leakage, amounting to Rs 2 lakh crore Benefit till date. The result of the plan.
He said the policy decisions have also laid the foundation for the emergence of a large lender like SBI which can quickly meet the credit needs of the economy. Sitharaman said the Modi regime has also taken the right decisions to stay away from businesses where the government should not be there, pointing out that till the time Air India was privatized, it was losing Rs 20 crore per day.
Apart from this, she said, the government also took some tough decisions like abrogating the provisions of Article 370 and Article 35A. On August 5, 2019, the Center revoked the special status given to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution. The erstwhile state was also divided into two union territories, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
He further said that ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Vigyan, Jai Anusandhan’ and ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas and Sabka Prayas’ are going to be the mantras for the next 25 years and this spirit will make India a developed economy. . until 2047.