agencies
New Delhi, July 25: Newly elected President Ram Nath Kovind Tuesday said the key to India’s success was its diversity and emphasised the need to enhance opportunities for the underprivileged to help mould an egalitarian society.
In his first address at the central hall of Parliament after taking oath as the 14th President of India, Kovind, 71, advocated the need to build an India that was “an economic leader as well as a moral exemplar”. “For us, those two touchstones can never be separate. They are and must for ever be linked. The key to India’s success is its diversity. Our diversity is the core that makes us so unique,” he told a gathering of governors, chief ministers, senior politicians, diplomats and other guests.
Kovind, who took over from Pranab Mukherjee Tuesday, referred to the “mix of states and regions, religions, languages, cultures, lifestyles and much more” that was India. “We are so different and yet so similar and united,” he said.
Kovind said while India had achieved “a lot” as a nation, “the effort to do more, to do better and to do faster should be relentless”. He said this was especially true as the country approached the 75th Year of its independence in 2022.
India, he said, should focus on its ability to “enhance access and opportunity for the last person and the last girl- child from an underprivileged family in the last house in the last village”. This must include a “quick and affordable justice delivery system”, Kovind, a Dalit, said.
The President said it was appropriate that the land of the Buddha should lead the world in its search for peace, tranquility and ecological balance. “We need to sculpt a robust, high growth economy, an educated, ethical and shared community, and an egalitarian society, as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi and Deen Dayal Upadhyay,” he said.
These principles, he said, were “integral to our sense of humanism”. “This is the India of our dreams, an India that will provide equality of opportunities. This will be the India of the 21st century,” he said. Kovind made a special reference to the role women played in “nation building”.
Women who, despite responsibilities at home and work, raised children to be “ideal citizens” were nation builders, he said. Nations were not built by governments alone, he said, for the government could at best be a facilitator and a trigger for society’s entrepreneurial and creative instincts.
