Chandigarh, Dec 8 (PTI) Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Sunday said that "Viksit Bharat" is no longer a dream, but a target that has to be achieved with the collective efforts of the citizens, keeping the message of the Bhagavad Gita in mind.
He also warned people about forces that want to hurt India.
"We have chosen the path of Viksit Bharat in 2047. Viksit Bharat is no longer a dream, but a target before us. To achieve it, we will have to keep the message of the Gita in mind.... Like Arjuna was focused on his target, we will have to have the same vision, the same determination, the same concentration," Dhankhar said.
Addressing an event in Haryana's Kurukshetra during the ongoing International Gita festival, the vice president said he has no doubt in his mind that the target of a developed India will be achieved with the collective efforts of the people of the country by 2047 or even before that.
He talked about the rapid progress India has made in the last few years and expressed hope that the country, which is currently the world's fifth-largest economy, would soon leave Germany and Japan behind.
The vice president cautioned people, saying there are some forces in the country and abroad, which on the basis of money power and by using mechanisms, want to hurt India, its economy and make its institutions dysfunctional.
"Their sinister design, pernicious object is to taint, tarnish and diminish our constitutional institutions, to run down our growth trajectory. Such forces cannot be ignored now.
"Our culture says that there are occasions when such forces have to be crushed, they have to be crushed.... And we understand all this from the Gita," he said.
"I want to give a message from this land that the nation is supreme for us. There is nothing to be measured in this love for the nation, it will be pure, it will be 100 per cent. We will always keep the nation first," he said.
"We have to remember, we are Indians, Indianness is our identity and we are citizens of such a great country that there is no other country like this in the world, so will we allow our Mother India to be hurt?" Dhankhar asked the gathering.
Referring to the Centre's free ration scheme, Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) that covers 80 crore poor people, the vice president, without naming anyone, said it is "perverse" thinking that this means the government has accepted that 80 crore people in the country are poor.
"Some people are a recipe for chaos, they can only be critics, they cannot think in a positive way. My message to them is that they should understand the essence of the Gita, the message of the Gita," he said.
The PMGKAY was launched in April 2020 to help the poor amid the COVID-19 pandemic for three months but extended later. Under the scheme, poor families get five kg of foodgrains each month for free.
The vice president talked about the technological advancement the country has made in various fields and said India's digital penetration is a matter of envy for the rest of the world.
"World leaders tell me that we want to learn from India in digital penetration, technological application," he said.
Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya, Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini and Gita Manishi Swami Gyananand, were present on the occasion, among others.