Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 75th Birthday: What Investments And Visits Are Planned This Year

The Sewa Pakhwada, a fortnight-long celebration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday, begins on September 17 this year and ends October 2, Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary.

In Dhar, the Prime Minister will inaugurate the Swasth Nari Sashakt Parivar Abhiyan (Healthy Woman Empowered Family Campaign). Details of this campaign and the other one—PM MITRA—also to be launched on his birthday will emerge later in the day.

So far, the Swasth Nari campaign is expected to include awareness camps, where blood pressure and other health parameters would be screened, blood donations would reportedly be encouraged and nutrition standards and awareness would be reviewed. There would also be tests conducted for endemic diseases such as tuberculosis, which India has been trying to wipe out, and conditions such as anaemia, which still affects a large proportion of women and children.

The PM MITRA, on the other hand, is a proposed integrated textile park that, according to the Ministry of Textiles, is "inspired by the Prime Minister's 5F vision", referring to farm to fibre to factory to fashion to foreign, or the entire value chain of textile production and export.

The government of India is setting up seven such parks in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra, apart from the one in Madhya Pradesh. Once completed, each park is expected to create 1,00,000 jobs directly and 2,00,000 jobs indirectly. The one whose foundation stone will be laid by the Prime Minister on his birthday is the first of the PM MITRA parks.

It is expected that each park will attract investments worth Rs 10,000 crore, though the one coming up in Dhar, according to the Madhya Pradesh government's Industries Department, has already drawn Rs 23,000 worth of investment proposals.

As of September 15, the state has "approved" 91 companies to invest in this park, out of 114 that had expressed interest—an over 85 per cent success rate for applicants, and adding up to approvals worth Rs 20,000 crore.

According to a recent statement by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, 1,300 acres of land has been allotted to companies seeking to play a role in PM MITRA at Dhar, out of a total 2,100 acres available for the project. A large number of infrastructure facilities and subsidies will be provided to companies as part of the scheme, the cost of which is to be shared by the State and central governments, whose specifics are still being worked out. The scheme is to be overseen by the Union Ministry of Textiles.

Previous birthday celebrations of Prime Minister Modi have also coincided with launches, such as of the SUBHADRA welfare scheme in Odisha in 2024, aiming to empower women aged 21 to 60 years with direct financial assistance and digital literacy.

In the year before, the government of India launched the Vishwakarma Yojana, which seeks to empower individuals based on their family or community based skills. It was targeted at members of backward communities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, women and other weaker sections.

The idea is to empower blacksmiths, goldsmiths, potters, carpenters, sculptors and others with crafts and skills that are marketable and can be passed on as traditional learning to others.

In 2022, the Prime Minister celebrated his birthday clicking photos of cheetahs imported to Kuno national park in Madhya Pradesh from two African nations, Namibia and later, South Africa.