Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the Constitution helped in taking the country forward, but a lot still needs to be done. Speaking at Vigyan Bhavan on the occasion of Constitution Day, Modi said hundreds of years of dependence had pushed India into several problems.
The India that was once called a golden bird was suffering from poverty, starvation and diseases. In that background, the Constitution always helped us in taking forward the nation,” he added.
“Our Constitution drafters gave us the Constitution in the light of the dreams seen by the people who lived and died for the independence and by cherishing the thousands of years long great traditions of India,” he said.
He said when compared to other countries that became independent around the same time as India, they are way ahead of us today. “It means that a lot of things still need to be done. We have to reach the goal together,” he added.
The reality is that even after decades post-Independence, a large section of people in the country had to suffer exclusion. “Crores of such people did not even have a toilet at their house. They were living in the dark in the absence of electricity, without water,” he said.
“Investing oneself in understanding their problems, their pain to make their lives easier – I consider this the real honour of the Constitution. I’m satisfied that in line with this sentiment of the Constitution, a vigorous drive is going on to convert exclusion into inclusion,” the PM added.
He said that while no nation directly exists as a colony of another country, but it does not mean the colonial mindset has come to an end. “This mindset is giving rise to many distortions. We can see a clear example of this in the hurdles cropping up in the journey of developing nations,” the PM added.