PM Modi Transformed India in 9 Years; Vested Interests Irked by Nation's Rise: MoS Chandrasekhar to News18

The country’s startup ecosystem in many ways symbolises and represents the very changed India that has emerged after nine years of hard work and policymaking by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, in an exclusive conversation with CNN-News18 on Independence Day.

“For the first time, young Indians are operating on a global stage, creating innovations and creating start-ups that have grabbed the attention of investors from all over the world, and are doing so at scale and are really making their presence felt in the global innovation ecosystem,” he said. “The second is, the most important thing in the last 12 months, in particular, is the fact that the diversity and scope of startups which were all around internet and consumer internet for the first years, has now covered space, AI, semiconductors, automotive, EVs, high-performance computing, supercomputing. So it is almost like in the technology and the global innovation ecosystem, there is not any space that does not have Indian startups or young Indians present in innovating and creating technology for the future.”

On image and growth of India

For the last 65-70 years, India was seen as a country of great potential, the biggest democracy, great talented people, but having repeated decades of dysfunctional governance, some misguided socialism, crony capitalism, and all of that held India back, said the minister.

“Today India is seen as a country with many many young Indians with great potential, great energy, and determination marching forward. And for the first time, it is as if the narrative of governance and the narrative of India’s potential are harmonised and walking in lockstep. And it’s for the first time that the world looks at India, especially at this new generation of young, confident Indians, and say they are really stepping up to the plate and delivering what India’s promise has been for several decades,” he said.

India was a country that was performing under its potential, said Chandrasekhar. “Now the United States, the EU, Japan, which have for long dominated the technology space, are looking to partner with India,” he added. “The old narrative that ‘nahi kar sakte hain’, cannot do this, this is beyond our capabilities has all been turned on its head. And the other narrative of the government will trip you up even if you are a smart, young Indian, that has also been changed dramatically, where the government under the leadership of our prime minister is today the most active enabler and so heavily invested in the success of our youngsters that today the confidence and the opportunities that are there that represent the future for our young Indians, nobody is ever going to allow this country to slip back into decades of crony capitalism, and corruption, and misguided socialism, and appeasement, and that type of politics, that held this country and held crores of Indians back all these years. We are on a journey.”

Everybody has understood the direction that this country can go in, and the heights that this country and individual Indians can achieve, he said.

On Data Protection Bill

“The framework of data protection, which I argued during the UPA’s 10 years..they kept fighting saying privacy is not a fundamental right, privacy is not a big issue, and kept blocking every effort to have a discourse on this. It took Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2017 to basically say we will have a data protection bill. And it has taken some time because of the intervening years of Covid. But his view, ideology, philosophy to make sure that at the heart of governance are well-empowered citizens, citizens with rights and with a great sense of their duty to this country, to their communities, to their families is what will take this country forward and take us to the status of ‘Viksit Bharat’,” said Chandrasekhar.

This is one element of a spectrum of well-defined rights that the prime minister has given to Indian citizens .while always stressing that these rights come with their reciprocal duties, added the minister.

“Privacy and data protection is something that is very close to our prime minister’s view that as 120 crore Indians become internet users from the current 83 crore, every Indian, every digital naagrik must have the right to a safe and trusted internet, have accountable intermediaries and platforms,” he said. “So I think the framework of laws that are now being put, at the centre of it is the digital naagrik who will use the internet for his/her business, work, benefits and interactions with the government.”

These rights are a very important part of how the prime minister sees the framework and the role of the “digital naagrik” and his or her rights, he added.

On Newsclick controversy

“India’s rise especially in the past nine years, economically, from a security point of view, from our innovation confidence point of view, our role in the overall community of nations in terms of our own voice that is being heard increasingly with more respect and credibility as the G20 presidency shows or the GPAI chairmanship shows, all of this certainly will cause angst and bitterness among many countries and many people,” the minister said. “The rise of India, the rise of our economy, the rise of our people will certainly be challenged surreptitiously and/or directly by vested interests.”

They will operate through political parties, media surrogates, misinformation, and cross-border actors, he alleged. “Every time we are faced either with a political leader who goes and mouths lies about us abroad, or a platform that mouths misinformation about us in India, or indeed a foreign platform that talks about propaganda aimed at India, we should be alert and we should have both policy responses and aware citizenry that responds to that,” said the minister.

It is clear that the toxicity, the lies in politics, and the misinformation has been pioneered by one party that is being echoed by their cronies in the UPA, Chandrasekhar said. “Our party, our government has been absolutely transparent in what it does, whether it is policymaking through consultation, or creating policies. But we have, of course, an opposition that is increasingly desperate. Their leaders go to the US and cast aspersions, tear down our government, tear down our democracy, spread lies about the prime minister,” he said. “And they have the gall to turn around and say that the government and the Bharatiya Janata Party is responsible for toxicity.”

On 2024 elections

The BJP is confident about the Indian voters because people can see where the country is today compared to before 2014, said Chandrasekhar.

“While we may all sit in TV studios and look at disruptions in Parliament, never forget, the real master in Indian democracy is the citizen. And the citizen is clear today on which direction our country should go,” he said. “This is an awakened India…All of the misinformation, lies, political shenanigans that the rebranded UPA is trying to toss will not change the fundamental truth of what Prime Minister Narendra Modi and how he has transformed our nation in the last nine years, and how he has brought a resurgent new India into the limelight and is creating a much better future for crores of Indians across the country.”

We are in the most exciting time of independent India, said the minister. “And the reason we are here is simply that in the last nine years, we have had a leader in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has worked absolutely relentlessly and determinedly to change the course and destiny of our nation that he inherited in 2014. And those nine years of hard work have really made India today a very different India from what we thought was possible and what we certainly saw in the years pre-2014,” he said. “I wish I were a young Indian today, but unfortunately I am not. But I can certainly work hard with the prime minister to make a better future for all of those young Indians who comprise the majority of our population.”