RAMNAGAR: Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh and BJP Candidate for Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency said here on Monday that Prime Minister Modi gave women ‘ease of living’ with dignity.
The evidence of this, he said, is seen in a series of women centric reforms and schemes rolled out by Prime Minister Modi in the last 10 years with an extreme degree of sensitivity which was missing during the earlier regimes for almost six decades after independence, he said.
Addressing a series of election meetings comprising mostly Women Self Help Groups and a large number of women PRIs, Dr. Jitendra Singh recalled that Modi made history when as Prime Minister in his very first Independence Day address from the Red Fort he gave a call for construction of toilets for women.
No one had realised the seriousness of this but in the very first year nearly 4 lakh toilets for women had been constructed and then it turned into a mass campaign to bring up a toilet in every household, he said.
This single decision , he said, not only brought comfort and healthy well-being to the life of women folk but also gave them respect by liberating them from the compulsion of going for open defecation, he said. That is why in some places women toilets were named as Izzat Ghars, he added.
Similarly, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, through the Ujjawala scheme over 10 crore household women were liberated from the unhealthy plight of cooking through smoky kitchens and risking the health of their lungs because now they have the facility of using gas cylinders as an easy and healthy cooking option.
All these schemes, said Dr. Jitendra Singh, have not only brought comfort in the lives of the women of this country but have also given them self-confidence and reduced their dependence on their male counterparts. For example, he said, under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana the “Pukka Makaan” is now constructed in the name of the female spouse or the housewife. On the other hand, under Mudra scheme loans for livelihood without any guarantee are provided and out of these also so far over 60% have been availed by females.
