The Manipur water supply project will provide millions with access to clean drinking water at home and thousand others with employment opportunities, Prime Minister Modi said while laying its foundation stone through video conference on Thursday.
Referring to the Rs 30 billion water supply project, the prime minister said it would reduce the water problems of the state and would be especially providing huge relief to the women of the state. He said that apart from Greater Imphal, the project would benefit 25 small towns and 1,700 villages in the state. The project has been designed keeping in mind the needs of the next two decades.
Prime Minister recalled that last year Jal Jeevan Mission was launched in the country with a target of providing piped water to more than 15 crore houses and today about 100,000 water connections were being installed every day in the country, with people’s participation.
The prime minister said that work was on a mission mode to provide safe drinking water to every household.
Prime Minister Modi said better life is also directly linked to connectivity. He said the improvement in connectivity to the Northeast region was essential for a secure and sure Atmanirbhar Bharat. He said this would give a fillip to India’s ‘Act East Policy’ and also provide a boost to the travel and tourism industry in the region.
He said modern infrastructure was being developed in the Northeast along with highways, airways, waterways and information highways as well as gas pipelines. In the last six years, billions of rupees had been invested in the development of infrastructure in the entire region. The prime minister said efforts had been made to connect the four capitals of the Northeast states, two-lane roads to the district headquarters and all-weather roads to villages. To achieve this, he said about 3,000 km of roads have been laid and projects were being implemented to lay another 60,000 km of roads.
He said there was a huge improvement in the area of rail connectivity in the Northeast with projects to build new railway stations and convert the existing rail network into a broad gauge. Similarly, the work of connecting the state capitals in the region with a rail network was proceeding at a fast pace.
Apart from roads and railways, the air connectivity of the Northeast was equally important. Today there were about 13 operational airports in the Northeast. More than Rs 30 billion were being spent to modernise the existing airports in the Northeast including Imphal airport, he said.