Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said that the country welcomes robust, evidence-based criticism that strengthens policy and protects reform. The Prime Minister said that cynicism has no place in the country’s democratic progress and highlighted the value of constructive debate in the new year. Mr Modi said this while sharing an article by Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.

In his article, Mr Puri said that democracies benefit from criticism and not from the motivated fatalism of experts guided by politics. He stressed that India has chosen the path of execution, and it is the results, audited in numbers and felt in households, that will outlast any brief for despair.