KOLKATA:
After providing bank accounts to 15 crore unbanked people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today launched three social security schemes, including a Re 1 per day insurance cover, and said that the poor need empowerment, not aid.
Modi said Rs 15,800 crore has been deposited in the 15 crore Jan Dhan accounts opened in four months and the scheme to provide cooking gas subsidy directly into bank accounts of beneficiaries has helped stop pilferages and leakages worth hundreds of crores of rupees.
“I told the poor, this nation, this Government and our banks are for you… Poor do not want ‘sahara’. We need to change how we think. The poor need ‘shakti’,” he said at the event, also attended by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Modi said 80-90 per cent people in the country neither have insurance cover nor any possibility of pension.
While the three schemes will come into force from June 1, the Prime Minister said that in the first seven days of the trail-run, banks have enrolled 5.05 crore people, including 42 lakh from West Bengal.
The schemes — Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY), Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY) and Atal Pension Yojana (APY) — were simultaneously launched at 115 locations throughout the country.
Stating that it is a misconception that large industrial houses provide more jobs, Modi said about 5.5 crore small and medium entrepreneurs provide employment to more than 14 crore people.
“We can achieve whatever but if the fruits do not reach the poor, our development journey is incomplete… We are calling the world to make in India and at the same time we are opening bank accounts for the poor,” he said. (AGENCIES)
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