Indian Gained Importance Globally, Says PM Modi

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asserted that the importance India’s efforts, innovations and opinions are receiving today never happened earlier.

Speaking at an event here, Modi said India is not only participating in the world order but also contributing to making its future safe and secure. Taking an apparent swipe at Opposition parties for their criticism of probe agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED), he said those who looted the public money have had to return it. "The ED is being abused day and night. It has recovered over Rs 22,000 crore. This money is being returned legally to those from whom it was looted," he said.

He said the country has travelled from aspiration to achievement and from desperation to development under his governments over 10-year tenure, citing its massive welfare programmes for health insurance, cooking gas cylinders, building toilets and supplying piped drinking water. India is now not only a nation that dreams but also a nation that delivers, he said.

Asserting that the world's eyes are on India, he said it wants to know what the country thinks today. He noted that the new International Monetary Fund (IMF) data has stated that India is the only major economy whose GDP has doubled in 10 years.

Modi highlighted his government's cut down on corruption, boosting efficiency and local products, and the simplification of indirect taxes by introducing Goods and Services Tax. He said India's defence export has risen by 21 times in a decade, asserting that the country is now emerging as a manufacturing hub. Asserting that "India first" has become the mantra of the country's foreign policy, he said it used to follow the idea of maintaining "equi-distance" but it now believes in "equi-closeness".