No alternative to good governance: Modi

Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi pitched Brand BJP to global investors on Monday, outlining why he believed it was time for his party to stage a comeback at the Centre.

It was a rare Modi speech in English, as he addressed a Washington-based forum on emerging markets via teleconference.

The BJP’s presumptive PM indicated that the policy paralysis that has beset the present Congress-led UPA government, frightening away investors, will not dog a government led by him. He promised that the Indian people were ‘ready to take bitter pills for the greater good,’ and said there was ‘no alternative to good governance.’

The evidence of that, the Gujarat chief minister said, was his state. ‘The last four Gujarat elections have shown that people can tell the difference between good and bad,’ he said. The BJP has won the last four elections in Gujarat; the last three campaigns have been designed and led by Modi.

‘I motivated civil servants to take decisions – I encourage them to take up projects which give them self satisfaction,’ he said, adding, ‘Our mantra was Gujarat’s growth for India’s growth.’ 

Modi said suggested emerging markets be seen as emerging growth centres. ‘It is a mistake to consider emerging markets merely as markets. Are they simply markets? I suggest we should call them emerging growth centres... They can be converted into growth centres with the right harnessing of human and natural resources,’ he said.