India will be a developed nation when it celebrates 100 years of Independence, and it will have no place for corruption, casteism and communalism, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a news agency in an interview today.
“India will be a developed nation by 2047; corruption, casteism and communalism will have no place in our national life,” the Prime Minister said.
Speaking about the upcoming G20 summit in New Delhi, the Prime Minister said the world now looks to India for guidance. “Our words and vision are seen by the world as a roadmap for the future and not merely ideas,” he said. The world’s GDP-centric view is changing to a human-centric one, and India is playing the catalyst in this transformation, the Prime Minister said.
Stressing on how the world’s perception of India is changing, the Prime Minister said, “For long, India was seen as a country of one billion hungry stomachs. Now it is one billion aspirational minds and two billion skilled hands.”
The Prime Minister said India’s population can enable it to reap a massive demographic dividend over the next few decades. “Indians today have a great chance to lay the foundation for growth that will be remembered for the next 1,000 years,” he said. “Once seen simply as a large market, India now part of solutions to global challenges,” he added.
Taking a swipe at Opposition parties and doubling down on his attack on what the BJP terms “freebie culture”, the Prime Minister said “irresponsible financial policies and populism may give short-term political results but extract great social, economical price in the long term”.
In another jab at the Opposition, the Prime Minister said previous governments “lacked confidence” in the people of other states to successfully execute high-profile global meets outside Delhi.