Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday reiterated that self-reliance was the only way forward for India as he stressed that the “dependence on other nations was our only enemy”.
Speaking at the ‘Samudra se Samruddhi’ event in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, where he launched multiple maritime projects worth over Rs 33,000 crore, the prime minister said, “India is progressing with the sentiment of being a global friend. Today, we have no major enemy. In the true sense, if we have any enemy, it is the dependence on other countries.”
He called to defeat this “enemy” together and said that “the more we depend on foreign countries, the more we will fail.”
Modi said that until 50 years ago, 40 per cent of our import-export was through Indian-made ships. “But this industry, too, became the victim of Congress’s bad policies. The Congress, instead of giving impetus to the Indian shipbuilding industry, decided it was better to give foreign companies rent. The shipbuilding ecosystem collapsed, and we became reliant on foreign ships. Resultantly, while 40 per cent of trade was through Indian ships, it has reduced to just 5 per cent. This means that we became reliant on 95 per cent trade through foreign ships,” said PM Modi during a roadshow and rally in Bhavnagar.
“This reliance has caused a lot of damage to us. I want to give you some numbers. You will be shocked to know that every year, we pay $75 billion (Rs 6 lakh crore) to foreign shipping companies for their services as rent. This is almost the defence budget of India,” added Modi.
Taking a dig at the Congress, PM Modi said, “Congress policies have been detrimental to the youth of the country. These policies stopped the projection of India’s strength. An example of how much damage has been done is the shipping sector… Just imagine, in seven decades, how much money we have given in rent to other countries. With our money, foreign jobs have been created, and if a small part of this money had been put in our own shipbuilding industry by previous governments, then today, the world would be using our ships, and we would be getting lakhs of crores in shipping charges, and we would have saved our own money as well.”
Speaking on the need to become self-reliant, Modi said, “To maintain peace and stability and samruddhi, the country with the largest population needs to become atmanirbhar. Till we remain at the mercy of others, our self-respect will also be hurt. The future 140 crore citizens cannot be left in the hands of others. We cannot have our progress reliant on others. We cannot risk our future generations on others.”
Story continues below this ad
“Whether chips or ships, we need to make them in India,” said the PM.
The prime minister also spoke on next-gen reforms in the maritime sector, like ‘One nation, one document’ and ‘One nation, one port process’. He spoke about changes made in five maritime laws in the monsoon session of Parliament and said that most of the 40 ships and submarines recently inducted into the Navy, including the Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC-1) INS Vikrant, had been made in India. He further said that the decision to consider shipbuilding as Infrastructure would lead to the sector getting benefits reserved for infrastructure financing, helping it compete at the global level. Modi also mentioned the construction of the Maritime Museum in Lothal.
On port construction, he said, “We are building major ports through the Sagarmala scheme, and we have doubled port capacity in 11 years. Before 2014, ship turnaround time was 2 days, and it is now less than 1 day. New and big ports are being developed. Recently, in Kerala… India’s first deep-water container transhipment port was started. In Maharashtra, we are building the Wadhwan Port, which will be one of the top 10 ports in the world. In the shipping trade, India’s share is 10 per cent today, we need to increase it to three times more by 2047.”
