India has been integrating symbols since independence: Bhupender Yadav | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI- In a sharp rebuttal of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s statement in the US that PM Narendra Modi was creating hype around symbols like the ‘sengol’ in order to divert attention from falling GDP numbers and unemployment, labour and employment minister Bhupender Yadav on Thursday said the installation of sengol in Parliament was a symbol of the Indian way of life, and significant because it reflected how India has preserved traditional values while marrying them to a scientific temper that has kept pace with the times.
‘If an object can serve as a symbol of just governance, installing it in our Parliament to let it serve as a way of life is a good move and the duty of any government running the country,’ Yadav said while speaking at the Times Network India Economic Conclave.
He also said India accepted and integrated symbols when the country got independence.
‘We accepted the Ashoka Pillar, the Ashoka Chakra on our national flag, and Sarnath as symbols of India when we won independence. Didn’t these symbols connect us with our core values despite being a newly-created nation? The problem is people speak of modernity without understanding Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, which tells us to understand the values at India’s core. Those who haven’t read it oppose everything,’ Yadav said.
The senior BJP leader further said Congress’s boycott of the inauguration of Parliament was not only an insult to the country but also to the Constitution, which the party claims to swear by.
‘I feel sorry for a party that boycotts an institution that represents the Constitution of India. Congress protested when we implemented GST. It protested when India began Covid vaccination and when we opened Jan Dhan bank accounts. All they want is that one family should be in power. But the country is not for one family alone, but for the entire country,’ Yadav said.
Asserting that recent GDP and Periodic Labour Force Survey data belied Rahul’s claims about a ‘falling’ Indian economy, Yadav underlined that while India saw robust GDP growth of 7.2%, PLFS and EPFO registration numbers have shown an improvement on the employment front.
He added that unemployment declined to 6.8%, the lowest in four years, the labour force participation rose from 48.2% to 48.5% in the last quarter in 2023, and women showed greater enthusiasm for work in the quarter ending March 2023. He also said the ministry undertook several initiatives, from E-shram registrations of nearly 30 crore unorganised workers, creating linkages with the National Service Portal, and tying up with Microsoft to run the DigiSaksham initiative, to upskill the Indian workforce with the knowledge of AI.
Yadav denied the charge that employment realities were different from government data, and that Congress was able to wrest Karnataka from BJP on the back of its unemployment dole to the youth and would repeat the model in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Yadav said the Modi government was ‘on the right path’ and had the popular backing of people.
He also exuded confidence that the government would win the 2024 Lok Sabha polls on the basis of the government’s nine-year development track record and rubbished the opposition’s ‘politics of allurement’.