PANAJI
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday chatted with a fisherman, sarpanch, a footballer-turned politician, even a chaiwala from Goa, dropping suggestions and underlining his government's vision for the country, during a virtual interactive session with beneficiaries of the Atmanirbhar Bharat-Swayampurna Goa initiatives.
Speaking to Vasco-based Ruki Ahmed, who sells odds and ends along with chai at a gaddo in the port town, Modi quipped saying, he was also a chai seller like him.
“You are also a chaiwala like me,” Modi told Ahmed, a disabled person who is a district level table tennis gold medal winner in para-games.
Modi lauded Ahmed's courage while also stating that ever since his government was in power, it had made efforts to "ensure that the divyangs in our country can live with respect".
Speaking to Kundan Falari, a former footballer and presently the chairperson of the Bicholim Municipal Council, Modi enquired if his daughter was interested in football at all.
"You are a football star, are you teaching your daughter football or not?" Modi asked him, but Falari's answer evoked a smile from the Prime Minister.
"No sir, she is not interested... I thought she would be interested, but she has no interest. She is only interested in eating," Falari said.
In his conversation with Luis Cardozo, who has been running a fisheries-related business for 25 years, Modi had a word of advice.
"Our government is making efforts to ensure that fisherfolk should not limit themselves to the raw market, but also benefit from processing," Modi said, after Cardozo explained how a loan from a Prime Minister's welfare scheme helped him buy an insulated truck to ferry fish from the jetty to the marketplace, a change which enhanced his profit.
While speaking to Nishita Gawas, who runs a women's self-help group out of Pale in Sanquelim, Modi was impressed by the range of local processed foods marketed by her agency.
Modi also spoke to Isha Sawant, an under-secretary in the Goa government and a swayampurna mitra, lauding her outreach efforts, saying the country would benefit if bureaucrats are both sensitive and responsible to the needs of the people.
When Sawant informed the Prime Minister about her mentoring of women's self-help groups as part of the Swayampurna Goa initiative, Modi suggested that instead of just focussing on processing foods products, she should urge such groups to offer hospitality-related services, like providing manpower service in catering services.
"I will tell you my experience and offer suggestions. When I was in Gujarat, we have done service-oriented development for women who run self-help groups. We trained some self-help groups on how to serve food on the lines of the hospitality industry, got uniforms made for them and even trained them in hygiene. People used to call them to serve food during buffet services," Modi said.
