Agencies
NEW DELHI, May 26: As the UPA completes four years in its second term, the government today insisted that it has done "much more" in development and reforms than any of its predecessors and lamented that the media is not presenting the true picture.
Law minister Kapil Sibal listed a number of programmes undertaken by the Government like 'Direct Benefit Transfer subsidy scheme', 'Aaadhar', 'Right to Information' and 'right to Education' besides progress in sectors particularly energy, agriculture, telecom, education, health and rural development to buttress his assertion.
"Quite frankly, this government has done much more perhaps than any other government in the history of India," he told in an interview here.
"The problem, is there are two issues here, what the government has done actually on the ground and what is conveyed to the people through the electronic media. There is a huge gap between the two," said Sibal, who also holds the telecom portfolio.
Lamenting that media was not highlighting the achievements of the government but only focusing on "negativity", he said, "Fiction has taken over the facts".
Asked whether he wanted to say that the media has been 'unfair', Sibal replied, "Completely, the system functions on negativity."
Citing some achievements, he said agriculture production has increased to 260 million tonnes, which is a record of sorts as it has never happened earlier. He said there has been three-fold increase in food subsidy, minimum support price has grown manifolds and agriculture credit has crossed Rs 4.5 lakh crore.
Talking about energy, he said India has now become de jure nuclear power and countries like Japan, Australia and Canada had changed rules to do trade with this country in this field. |
