Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting and Parliamentary Affairs, Dr. L. Murugan ji, the man of the moment, Sameer Kochhar ji. Gursharan, Rohan.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's indeed befitting that Modinomics is being released at the time when we are all part of the Seva Pakhwada that's happening in our country. This is the time when all of us in the government and in the civil society get our acts together and take forward the the agenda that. And realize the vision that our Honorable Prime Minister has laid out starting from his birth date on the 17th of September. It will go on till the 2nd of October.

So it's, it's indeed a very auspicious moment that you know you have chosen to release Modinomics Part 2. I mean I call it Modinomics Part 2 because Modinomics has almost become like a, like a word synonymous with the economics of the day. The economics that inclusive economics that Sameer was speaking about associated with the Honorable Prime Minister's vision.

And it's indeed a great moment that you know you, you're looking at the Honorable Prime Minister who has, I mean nowhere in the world arguably would somebody have the, the kind of experience, the blend of experience, I mean, 25 years of the other side of public life, 25 years of public life within the government. So it's almost like 50 years in public service. I don't think anybody in the world would have this level of experience unstopped and continuous without any break. 50 years of experience in public life, I think, and absolutely remarkable.

And it's good that, you know, I heard this for the first time the word called reforms. Historian. It's really the, an absolutely appropriate word for the kind of documentation Sameer has done. And he came with this idea. I mean, it's almost two months now and he had the first draft and he wanted some information from within the government. And then we started to get the gaps plugged. And it is good that today the book is out and I'm pretty certain that all of us are going to enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed the Modinomics Part 1.

And good thing is this documentation is not just about these 11 years. It's also about the entire 25 years of the journey that our Honorable Prime Minister has had both as Chief Minister and the Prime Minister of our country. Friends, it's indeed a fact that our country is changing. Nobody can deny that I had recently been to a village and that too in a pocket, in an area in a state which is classified as a impoverished, which is classified as a very poor state.

And I was amazed to look at that village, a small village. I mean, you just go around and you realize a complete transformation has happened in the village. You just don't look at anything that's still remains unfinished. You find, you don't find any jhuggi, you don't find any hut. You find people living in proper houses. They could be small, big, medium. But the fact is they're living in houses. They have pot water coming, they have good road that brings them from the highway to their village.

Within villages, you find there are drains, there are village roads, you find a proper school, you find health infrastructure, you find people getting their benefits through the direct benefit transfer. So the entire amount that moves from the bank here in Delhi goes to his bank account via the UPI system and the DBT system without any loss, without any transmission loss. You find villages completely electrified. I mean, absolutely amazing that.

You know, there were times when there were like electricity breaks. Eight hours without electricity. I village, you can't don't even hear of that. Every house has electricity, every house has Ujjwala. You find that you don't find chulhas anywhere. I mean this transformation and I am talking about the villages, when you go upward then you realize you come to the highway and then suddenly you move to the airport. You, you look on the other side, you realize there is a railway station coming up. So it's like a complete transformation that's happening across our country.

And we might still have, I mean a lot of people might still say that look, we are still at $2,000 per capita economy, we're still a very poor country, stuff like that. But you know, I don't get into all that because you know this dollar rupee conversion is always a notional conversion. The exchange rate does not depend, does not really define. If you start looking at the purchasing power parity then possibly this would be somewhere there in 14,000 category.

And then when you look at what are our requirements. I was just with another officer and I was looking at that village and I was saying that look, in my understanding the GDP here does not matter. This guy is got everything here. I mean he's, he doesn't really want to get into that kind of a consumer lifestyle which people would classify as a rich. I mean he is happy, he is getting his all the essentials met. He is having a fairly decent time. So don't really compare A to B.

There are certain things in our economy which possibly will have no value but if you start putting value to it then the GDP will become much bigger. You don't require old age homes for our elders. I mean they, they are looked after. Well in our house I don't know that whether that is counted as a GDP but factually that is counted as GDP somewhere in the West. So all these calculations make no difference as long as we have inclusive growth.

As long as our economic support. The last person on the road, last person in the village, last person in the hierarchy. I think our job is done and it is good that all this documentation is happening and it's a well researched work because he, Sameer has a, has this great advantage of researching. I know that for close to 25 years now I, I was in Visakhapatnam as municipal commissioner. I, I've never told this in public but let me, let me tell you this.

I was in Visakhapatnam and there we started India's first online e-governance model. Nothing of this was there anywhere in the country, in fact arguably in the world. So people still had to go to a bank, collect a slip, do a challan, pay property taxes, bus certificates, go around health offices and collect those copies etc and I had the fortune of being one of those who could start that process there and Visakhapatnam and the project Socarium became India's first project where people could pay their bills online, people could come to a center and pay bills online.

And later on you would have seen it all became like e-Seva etc in the entire state and then later on in the country. I, I still remember I suddenly got a call from Delhi sitting there in Visakhapatnam and he mentioned that my name is Sameer Kochhar. I have, I wanted to talk to you so I said, you know, okay, tell me what exactly is my requirement? No, no, I have no requirement. You know, I have, I have heard from somebody and I am wanting to document Sokariyam and I said how did you come to know of Sakariyam? I am in Visakhapatnam somewhere.

And so we do this research and we have been, we've heard about it and, and then later in few days later I realized that he had published a report on it and that kind of became the first report actually a third party account on Socarium. So I think, I think this is what is required. There are a lot of people who will still have daggers drawn for anything that we do in the government. They don't understand the kind of effort which goes in to create lot of positive development that we see all around.

Nobody wants to talk about it. It's so easy to, you know, criticize. It's so easy to given hindsight experience, it's so easy to you know, nail somebody down. But you know it's, it requires a lot of courage for people to talk good about good people talk good about good things and, and believe me that that's, that's a huge motivation. We don't understand the value that you know, if somebody has put some efforts in doing a particular activity and then that get that efforts get recognized, people in your peer group start talking about it.

Then you know your enthusiasm goes many fold. That creates a positive attitude in you. And then eventually you know, you try and create more and more solutions for every problem. You find hundred solutions, not finding hundred problems to every solution. So I mean to that extent this entire journey Sameer, that you have taken through Skoch foundation and all the other activities that you do, where you have been documenting, you have been awarding rewarding many of us who have, whose. Whose efforts were possibly who, which all that would have remained completely undocumented. All that got documented and believe me that's a great service because you know, we are very poor in documentation.

We all, you know, busy with work. But if you start documenting, you will have millions of case studies which can still store straight away go to Harvard or any other big business schools or anywhere. But we are very poor in documenting, especially in government. Because you also, and many of us who document actually are also criticized by many others who actually think that you know, by documenting you're trying to, you know, boast about your own work. But believe me, it's not nothing to do with boasting.

When you document, you allow future generations to learn from the mistakes that you did. You also allow continuity to happen. And believe me, that remained after the soccer m experience. I had been continuously, wherever I am, I will, I've always been documenting and, and releasing all the fact sheets about the projects that we did. And that really kind of helps the future generations to take the legacy forward.

So I'm very happy that you have documented what the Honorable Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi ji has. Has. Has achieved, has done in the last 25 years of his public life. It has many chapters which brings, brings out the real development that has happened in our country. And I'm pretty certain all of us are going to lay our hands at this book and buy this book. I think important thing is not get a free copy. Buy this book, use it for our research work.

Use it for any experience and if you have any inputs, provide that to Sameer so that you know he comes with Modinomics 3 in. In quick time as you have done at this time. So once again my congratulations to the Skoch group and Sameer. I am, I'm pretty certain this will be a bestseller in few days. Thank you.

Participants at the Digital Assets of India: Sovereignty and Security