Express View on PM Modi’s I-Day speech: The long viewfinder

He plotted 2014, when his government became the first in three decades to win a majority at the Centre, as a point of rupture from the past. En route to the future, will be another milestone, in 2047, when India becomes “viksit” or developed. The PM underlined India’s “samarthya (capability)”, its aspirations and ambitions, as it takes its place as a decisive player and stabilising force and a “vishwamitra (a friend to all)”, in a world order rearranged by Covid.

His stitching together of his own election victories, past and presumed, in the India story, was seamless — it was also telling. In his manner of speaking, PM Modi was not making his second term’s last I-Day speech. Only months to go before the grand electoral face-off, he was already looking past Election Day and beyond.

As the present became a launchpad for the future, the crisis of the present subsided into an inset — the PM referred to Manipur in the beginning of his speech, without pausing on it. The viewfinder was trained on a distant but attainable goal, and on the path to get there. The PM identified three imperatives — reform, perform, transform.

India, he said, had the “triveni”, or confluence of three advantages: Demography, democracy and diversity. But the obstacles in India’s path were also three: Corruption, Dynasty, Appeasement. Youth from Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns, second to none in aspiration and ambition, women in self-help groups, and the 13.5 crore poor who have entered the neo middle class in the last five years — they would power the India story forward and higher, he said. The world, which was already curious about and attentive to India in the year of its G20 presidency, was watching.

The PM’s focus on the future and his broad strokes meant that the Opposition did not become his prime target or theme. But in his determination to set his sights above and beyond, the PM also missed a valuable opportunity on the ground. To use the I-Day occasion to look the nation in the eye, with greater compassion, and more fully. Or to use his podium to send out the much needed acknowledgement and message, from Manipur to Nuh, that the “rashtriya charitra (national character)” is not something perfectly formed. It is, still, a work in progress, a challenge for the nation as it marks 77 years of Independence. If it has to realise its “samarthya”, a challenge it must meet, bit by difficult bit, daily.