PM Modi at Lakhpati Didi event

(MENAFN-IANS) Jalgaon (Maharashtra), Aug 25 (IANS) – Amid outrage over the rape and murder case of a doctor in Kolkata and the sexual abuse of two four-year-old girls in Badlapur, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that “crimes against women are an unpardonable sin and whoever is guilty should not be spared”.

Addressing the Lakhpati Didi Sammelan in Jalgaon, Maharashtra, Prime Minister Modi said, “Today, I will once again tell all the political parties of the country and the state government that crimes against women are an unpardonable sin. Whoever is guilty should not be spared. Even those who help him in any way should not be spared. Be it in a hospital, a school, an office or the police system, at whatever level negligence occurs, everyone should be brought to book. Our government is also continuously strengthening laws to impose the harshest punishment possible on those who torture women.”

At the event, Prime Minister Modi released a revolving fund of Rs 2,500 crore to benefit about 48 lakh members of 430,000 Self Help Groups (SHGs). He also provided bank loans of Rs 5,000 crore to benefit 258,000 members of 235,000 SHGs.

The Prime Minister said, “The government is opening up all the fields for our daughters where there were restrictions earlier… Today, women officers and fighter pilots are being commissioned in all three wings of the defence. From agriculture and dairy sector in villages to the startup revolution, many daughters are now running businesses,” he added.

“Today, more than 125,000 bank employees are providing banking services in villages. Now we are also training our sisters as drone pilots so that they can help farmers to practice modern agriculture using drones. We are giving women leadership roles in modern agriculture and natural farming. For this we have launched the Krishi Sakhi programme,” he said.

Prime Minister Modi told the participants that they must have heard that India is going to become the world's third largest economy and that women will play a major role in that. But a few years ago, he reminded them, that was not the case.

“Women guarantee the prosperity of every home and family. However, there was no one to guarantee help to women. Women did not own property in their name and if they had to take a loan from a bank, they could not avail it. In such a situation, they were unable to start their own small business. Therefore, I, your son and brother, decided to make your life easier. We took decisions in the interest of women year after year,” he said.

“Our government has decided that all the houses it builds for the poor should be registered in the names of women. Most of the 40 million houses built so far are in the names of women. Now we will build another 30 million houses, most of them also in the names of our mothers and sisters,” said Prime Minister Modi.

The Prime Minister said that the campaign to create Lakhpati Didis is not just a campaign to increase the income of sisters and daughters. It empowers the entire family and the coming generations. It changes the entire economy of the village. “When I came to you during the Lok Sabha elections, I said that we need to make three crore sisters into Lakhpati Didis. In the last 10 years, one crore Lakhpati Didis have been created and in the last two months alone, 11 lakh more Lakhpati Didis have been created,” he added.

PM Modi mentioned that in the last 10 years, 100 million women have participated in this campaign of Lakhpati Didi and have been connected with banks which have provided them with easy loans without any hassle. “Until 2014, bank loans worth less than Rs 25,000 crore have been provided to Sakhi Mandals. On the other hand, around Rs 900,000 crore of assistance has been provided in the last 10 years. Also, direct government assistance to women has increased by 30 times,” he said.

“Today I challenge you… leave the seven decades of previous governments on one side and put the ten years of the Modi government on the other. The amount of work the Modi government has done for the sisters and daughters of the country, no other government has done after independence,” Prime Minister Modi said amid thunderous applause from the participants.

Before the event, Prime Minister Modi interacted with a group of Lakhpati Didis who thanked him for taking steps for the welfare of women.

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