A speech to India’s children. But why?

Schoolchildren across the country — or at least those whose schools, especially if these were in far-flung areas or even in the poorer parts of metros, could manage to rig up a television screen when the daily fight is for basic electricity and blackboards or even teachers — are likely to have been excited about the Prime Minister addressing them directly. Children are happy when they are the centre of attention.
It is not clear, however, if there was much in the PM’s remarks over an hour and a half on the occasion of Teachers’ Day on Friday that would have struck the kids as new. Much of it concerned themes that are all too familiar — the education of girls, toilets for girls in schools to check their dropping out from early education, skill development (which began under the UPA but for which the Modi regime has created a separate ministry), cleanliness, the spread of education through digital technology, politics being “service” and not a “profession”, making teaching a “movement” (in which even engineers and doctors should be taking part), not forgetting a little something about the environment.
None of this is anything to object about. All of it is positive thought. Parents, teachers, family elders, and the conversation-extinguishing television set in middle class living rooms, talk about things like these with boring regularity. The question therefore remains what Mr Modi’s purpose might have been. A little propaganda with impressionable minds about the points of emphasis in his government? Or a touch of building one’s own persona?
No PM before Mr Modi has thought of an idea like this before. Will the “direct connect with children” show now be made an annual feature? God knows. But God forbid. Remember, the PM, as is his wont, is prone to uttering aloud factual inaccuracies. In his interaction with schoolboys and girls, for instance, he noted with a missionary’s intensity that it was not the climate that had changed but “our habits”. This is surely against science, and also against what children are taught in schools.
The birthday of the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was celebrated as Children’s Day. There were no speeches. Kids had fun with sporting events and painting competitions. “Chacha Nehru” — Uncle Nehru — seemed a likeable figure, even an adventuresome guy. Is
Mr Modi, now seen more and more in Jawahar jackets, bandgalas (minus only the red rose) and Nehru-style churidaars, patterning himself as the saffron Nehru? The theatrics and the imitation are hard to miss.
The pity is Teachers’ Day was chosen by the Prime Minister to become known among students. There was not much in it for teachers except the lament that people don’t wish to teach anymore.