‘Took urbanisation as opportunity not challenge’: PM Modi on India’s first driverless Metro

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday flagged off India’s first driverless train on the Magenta Line of Delhi Metro. Delivering a virtual address at the ceremony, which also witnessed the launch of the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC), PM Modi said that this was possible because “we took urbanisation as an opportunity, not a challenge.”

“Today’s ceremony is an attempt to turn urban development, urban ready and future ready,” the prime minister said. He, however, added that till a few years ago, when it came to urbanisation, no attention was paid to its future needs, people worked half-heartedly and there was confusion all around. “Urbanisation was taking place rapidly but our cities were not equipped at the same speed to deal with its after effects,” PM Modi said, adding that this led to a huge gap between the demand for urban infrastructure and its delivery.

He then recalled how it was only under his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalwart and former prime minister Atal Vihari Vajpayee that Delhi’s first-ever Metro was flagged off in 2002. PM Modi also noted how when his first government came to power in 2014, only five cities had Metro services as compared to 18 today. “By 2025, we will expand Metro services to more than 25 cities,” he vowed.

PM Modi then compared Metro-related statistics from today to those earlier. “This isn’t just an infrastructure made of bricks, stones and concrete. This, in fact, is the evidence of the fulfilment of the ambitions of the country’s middle class,” he remarked.

How did this change come about when the bureaucracy and the people are the same, PM Modi questioned. This, he said, was because his government treated urbanisation not as a challenge, but as an opportunity. “In our country, there was never a policy for the Metro,” the prime minister remarked.

India’s first driverless Metro will run on Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line, between Janakpuri West and Botanical Garden. Monday’s inauguration also came just days after PM Modi laid the foundation stone of the construction work of the Agra Metro, in Uttar Pradesh.