NDA government has completed two years at the centre. It’s been a roller coaster ride and lets have a look at top achievements of 4 ministries
1.
Piyush Goyal
Piyush Goyal is a
well known Chartered Accountant and investment banker and was also on the board
of SBI and Bank of Baroda. He is currently a Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha)
and was earlier the National Treasurer of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
As Power minister,
he introduced the system of reverse coal auction where people sitting across
the world can follow on real time basis and is very transparent. This was
implemented after Supreme Court cancelled the coal blocks. Now this system has been expanded to power
and renewable energy as well.
When Mr Goyal took
over the charge, more than 2/3rd of the thermal power plants in
India suffered from lack of adequate amount of coal in the aftermath of coal
scam. Today, all the thermal power
plants in the entire nation can ensure uninterrupted power supply. They have an average 23 days of stock.
There was a huge
success from him on the renewable energy front and he also launched the UDAY
scheme for distribution companies as a rescue plan. He has also launched “One nation One gird One
price of power”.
In a bid to make
Indian households more energy efficient, GoI under: UJALA (Unnat Jyothi by
Affordable LEDs for All) scheme distributed over 8 crore LED bulbs in a year
across 125 cities in the country. This has lead to savings of over 2.84 crore
kWh and benefitted from daily reduction of CO2 emissions of 23,000 tonnes. The
ministry is committed to achieving the target of replacing 77 crore
inefficient bulbs in India thereby saving energy of 100 billion kWh and Green house
gas reduction of 80 million tonnes every year.
2. Suresh Prabhu
Suresh Prabhu is a
Chartered Accountant and is member of upper house of Parliament representing
Haryana. Prabhu has held several government and semi government positions,
which includes chairmanship of Maharashtra State Finance Commission, Saraswat
Co-operative Bank, Member of the Maharashtra Tourism Development Board, among
others.
Suresh Prabhu’s
development strategy is divided into short term and long term. Short term
changes were done to bring instant relief to the passengers wherever it was
possible and long term strategy was to increase the revenues for the railways
and create a sustainable model.
In the short term he
has given top priority to customer satisfaction and better passenger amenities.
In its bid to provide quality food to passengers, e-catering services have been
started on 260 routes. He has also introduced wifi connectivity in 9 stations,
improved cleanliness by fitting bio toilets, providing dust bins in non ac
coaches, disposable bags for garbage disposal and many others. In the service
improvement front, the speed of online booking has been increased 4 times, assured
confirmed ticket or flight travel, mobile app for security of women, online
booking of retiral rooms, mobile charging facilities in general coaches and in
existing coaches., launching of all India helpline numbers to register
complaints, security and others. His
constant emphasise on improving the customer satisfaction has changed the
perspective of customers from negative to positive.
Mr Prabhu unlike
previous ministers has not gone for popular measures such as announcing new trains,
instead he has focused a lot on infrastructure development by raising resources
from non conventional sources. Long term front, railways have got landmark
achievement, where LIC will provide highest ever funding of Rs 1.5 lakh crore. Three separate MOUs were signed with
the states of Orissa, Jharkand and Chhatisgarh for critical coal connectivity
projects to improve transportation of coal. E-tendering
and e-auction introduced.
He is focused on increasing the
speed of trains and also increasing revenues from non-fare segments (Eg:advertisements)..
Around Projects worth over Rs. 10,000
crore were introduced as part of Railyatri Upbhokta Pakhwada, which
significantly improved freight and passenger services. In the first phase, 10
selected stations would be developed as model stations with improved passenger
amenities.
He also innovated the use of drones for
project monitoring, and IT dashboards for performance management. He reduced
the lead time for approval cycles by delegating powers at down the level.
The Indian railways
has seen considerable improvement in past 2 years, but it still has long way to
go.
3.
Arun
Jaitely
Arun Jaitelly is a
lawyer and is a senior advocate of Delhi High Court.
As he took charge of
Finance ministry, he did not go for big bang popular reforms, but instead lay the
foundation for achieving macro-economic stabilisation by making India ready for
future to whether the storm. In 2014, every macroeconomic parameter (GDP growth
rate, inflation, fiscal deficit, current account deficit) was doing very
poorly. This has been turned around. He
created a social security platform on the back of financial inclusion, health
security, etc.
He has undertaken a
massive increase in public expenditure to improve the money flow in economy. He
has undertaken major reforms in public sector banks by giving licence to new
banks. He has passed the bankruptcy bill, RERA bill. Currently efforts are on
from his side to implement the GST in India.
4.
Sushma
Swaraj
Sushma Swaraj is
former lawyer and current minister of external affairs of India. She is the
only second women to hold this position. Sushma Swaraj believes in working
silently and has turned out to be one of the best cabinet ministers.
She has been
instrumental in supervision of large scale evacuation of people during crisis
in Yemen, Libya and Iraq. Over 4200 Indian people, 1947 foreign nationals were
rescued. The international community applauded the Indian efforts.
She has played a
great role in ensuring the drinking water supplies to Maldives when sole water
desalination plant was knocked down due to fire. Maldives water crisis was single handedly
tamed by India.
Over and above this,
she took swift action to help Indians abroad in various situations like saving
mans sister who was held by drug trafficking in UAE, saving a girl in Germany
who was stuck without passport and money, helping a 5 year old Pakistan girl in
need of liver transplant and many more.
Under her tenure,
the Land boundry agreement was successfully completed with Bangladesh.
