PM Modi Ends Years of Dull Red Fort Speeches

(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)

Prime Ministerial speeches made on August 15 serve several purposes. Indeed, they can be compared with two American phenomena: one a permanent institution, the other a temporary intervention. Every January, the American president gives his State of the Union address. This is his assessment of his administration's achievements and challenges, of the internal and international situation that confronts the American people at that moment in time.

The other phenomenon is a reference to Franklin Roosevelt's "Fireside Chats", the series of speeches during the tumultuous and tough years of the Depression and World War II: exhorting his co-citizens to work hard and take on the hardships that destiny, and bad economic choices, had thrown on them; explaining, in commonsensical language, using an avuncular tone, the grand social and economic changes and policies he was introducing.

At its best, an August 15 speech in India is a mix of the State of the Union and the Fireside Chat. This is a very delicate balance - especially since the speech has to make sense to a variety of stakeholders, and be intelligible both to the world at large and more so to voters in the far-flung corners of India.

In recent years, Prime Ministers have not always managed to hit that sweet spot. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a gifted orator, but reading a text drafted by a bureaucrat was the worst service one could do to him. Manmohan Singh's natural reticence and limited public-speaking skills were not helped by an inclination towards bureaucratic caution and the need to genuflect to his political employers.

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This led to a long rendition of schemes and projects, a dhobi-list of proper nouns and yojanas and karyakrams that left everyone cold. Singh's 2013 speech was a classic in this regard; it began with Rajiv Gandhi and ended with Indira Gandhi. Especially in the past two or three years, as India lost direction, as scandals hit the headlines, as the economy stumbled and as troubles mounted on the jobs and prices fronts, the August 15 speech could have been used to rouse and inspire, to talk up the public mood. Singh proved unequal to the task.

This context is important, not so much to criticise Narendra Modi's immediate predecessor but to explain why today's speech by the Prime Minister stood out, what it set out to achieve and what it consciously avoided. It was simple but not simplistic. It opened a conversation with India, but did not talk down to Indians.

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It may be too early to predict Modi's legacy and how he would want posterity to remember him, but this speech made it apparent that there were two themes he was keen to make a point of embracing. Indeed, they represented a continuity with his campaign in that he had mentioned them repeatedly in the run-up to the 2014 election as well.

The first theme was the economy - jobs for young people; making India a manufacturing power; making it easier for foreign capital and investors to do business in India; encouraging youth to become not just job seekers but "job creators", to go entrepreneurial and set up high-quality ("zero defect") small and medium units (the bedrock of an industrial society); and of course shutting down the Planning Commission.

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In short, the speech told us Modi remained committed to a fast-growth, more open economy, and to the fulfilling of the dreams of 1991. Those who felt his government had lost direction after a pulsating campaign have been sent a message of reassurance.

The second theme related to gender: toilets for every schoolgirl in a year - a stupendous achievement if Modi can pull it off; a frontal attack on female foeticide and infanticide; and a clear-cut, hard-hitting statement that India's rape epidemic is not just a national shame, it is a male problem. To tackle it, parents don't have to shackle their daughters - they have to put sense into the heads of their sons.

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These twin themes, the emancipation of the economy and the empowering of women, were the key takeaways from Modi's first Independence Day address as Prime Minister. Expectedly, he delivered his words with eloquence. Now he has to deliver results.

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