Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, 3 March, interacted with students who have returned to India from war-ridden Ukraine, and said that if the country had had proper medical education policies since the beginning, students would not be forced to go abroad.
Speaking to the evacuees in Varanasi, PM Modi said, "You have had to go through an experience like this in your lifetime, at such a young age, that too away from the country, alone. I can imagine what sort of mental suffering you must have had to go through. Despite difficulties, the government is now actively evacuating students."
"Our country should be strong, the solution to all these difficulties is in that. I believe that if our country had proper policies of medical education since the beginning, you all would not have had to go out," he told them, taking a jibe at the previous governments.
The prime minister also stated he also empathises with those students and their families who have expressed their anger at him or the government, saying that such emotions were natural when facing hardship, and would not last for long.
What the Students Said
A student sitting in the gathering told the prime minister, "We had left all hope that we would be able to return to India. Our flights had been cancelled. When the Indian embassy and the government started evacuating people, we got new hope. All thanks to the Indian government... I don't think without the help of the Indian government, we would have been able to come back safely."
"We did not experience any difficulty of any sort in the evacuation process," another student said to PM Modi. "Our India is so great that people of other nations are using our flag for evacuation," she added.
A total of 17,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine in the past few weeks, as per the government. By 10 March, a total of 80 flights are expected to evacuate the remaining Indian nationals who are stranded in the conflict zone.
Two students of Indian nationality have died in Ukraine in the past two days.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)