PM speech: Did Modi have Bihar in mind?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second Independence Day address was an appeal to the “small man” in the country, and the farmer, with the suggestion that he remained their friend, and would abide by his promise to root out corruption, which he said had invaded the whole system. The unspoken element here was that his opponents’ loud criticism that he ran a government for the rich was untrue.

The PM also attempted to offer in his 90-minute address a brief account of what he had done so far to help commoners and to check corruption. The number of Jan Dhan accounts opened and the promise to electrify the remaining 18,500 villages in the country in the next thousand days were the highlights of the speech, besides the claim that inflation had been brought down and the poor could breathe a sigh of relief.

All of this — the impact of what’s been claimed to have been done and the new promise — is subject to questioning, but the style on view was a clear departure from past Independence Day speeches of PMs. There was no rhetoric, no laying out of grand ideas, no thanking of different sections of society, no discussion of India’s place in the world, no promise to defend the country against hostile forces, and the like. The speech was in the nature of a conversation with those who lack the basics.

This perhaps explains three sets of announcements, although they appear to lack in substance. One, the agriculture ministry is to be re-named the “agriculture and farmers’ welfare” ministry (krishi aur kisan kalyan)”. Two, the new slogan — “Start-up and Stand Up India”, meant to promote start-ups by Indians through bank loans, should aim to give loans to the tribal people and to dalits under appropriate instruction from the government. And three, there should be no interviews for ordinary jobs and all recruitment must be based on marks through on-line applications to ensure transparency.

There was no mention of the fate of schemes and novel ideas launched a year ago — Swachh Bharat, and Niti Aayog, to name just two — though reference to ending corruption and black money abounded. But there was no mention of One Rank, One Pension for retired military personnel either, though this was widely anticipated, except to say that it had been accepted in principle and was being worked on.

So, was the Prime Minister making his pitch at farmers and the poor with Bihar and other state elections in mind? And, did he skip key policy questions because not much has happened so far and the government has much to be humble about? Such questions do inevitably arise.