In an event on 8th December, organized by the Swarajya magazine, Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog said, “we are too much of a democracy”.
Amitabh Kant made this remark while talking in the context of the government efforts in talking to the farmer’s representatives amid the farmer’s protest. The event was held online and was named ‘The Road to Atmanirbhar Bharat’. This remark was made by Mr. Kant when he was responding to a question of whether COVID-19 presents an opportunity for India in manufacturing, considering that earlier attempts were made but weren’t successful.
He was quoted saying, “So tough reforms are very difficult in the Indian context, we are too much of a democracy. For the first time, the government has had the courage and the determination to carry out very hard-headed reforms across sectors… mining, coal, labor, agriculture… these are very, very difficult reforms… You needed a huge amount of political determination and administrative will to carry out these reforms which are being done.”
He further added, “Agriculture must get reforms. It’s very important to understand this, that the present reforms, nobody is saying that we do away with the mandis, the mandis will exist, the MSP will be there. But farmer gets alternate choices to sell his crop. I am a great believer that the farmer must have a choice. Why should we force him to only go to one place, we give you opportunity to go to five other places. Somebody gives you more than the MSP, why should the farmer not get it? That is the objective of the reforms.”
After this event and remark, the netizens were quick enough to pick up on this. Twitter had flooded tweets on this particular remark.
Here are some of them:
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