Pulling a fast one: On 80th Independence Day, Modi harps on last 10 years

It was on expected lines. The takeaway from the Independence Day address by the prime minister: sab changa si. His government is in control and all is well. The country is relentlessly moving towards its goal of becoming ‘Viksit Bharat’ by 2047.

PM Narendra Modi’s address from the Red Fort on Saturday morning again turned out to be a laundry list of what has been achieved by his government and its vision for ‘Viksit Bharat’. For the few who may have expected a soul-stirring speech and a departure from ‘business as usual’, the address would have been disappointing. Instead, the prime minister strove to put up a brave face while claiming that all was well, that the rest of the world is looking up to India and that his government has navigated the challenges remarkably well.

The prime minister’s speech writers had clearly not read the evocative commentary penned by Rajya Sabha MP Prof. Manoj Kumar Jha. Even if they did, perhaps it was too late for them to change the speech. However, Jha reflected the sentiment of many citizens when he wrote in The Wire on the eve of Independence Day that 'India does not need a speech that tells citizens everything is well. It needs one that acknowledges the country's shortcomings, failures, wounds and challenges along with its progress'.

For the record, the prime minister parroted that his government had pulled 25 crore Indians out of poverty while missing out on the boast that 80 crore Indians are given free food rations by the government. The PM, who has a fascination for the Railways, claimed that in the last 10 years, 100 per cent electrification of tracks has been completed while it had taken 90 years since 1925 to achieve 30 per cent electrification. The Railways, he suggested, had taken a huge stride by introducing a hydrogen-powered train.

Amusingly, while the prime minister was making these claims from the Red Fort, an editorial in The Times of India appeared in the morning under the headline: 'Pulling a Fast One'. The editorial comment took note of the fact that Indian Railways claims to have as many as 1,000 ‘superfast’ trains with a speed of 55 kilometres per hour.

The definition, the editorial points out, has lasted all of 33 years and the catch is that the fare of all superfast trains is much higher and includes a hefty surcharge. To put it in context, no train with a speed of less than 200 kilometres per hour is included in China’s high-speed rail network. Pulling a fast one indeed.

The address, however, skirted uncomfortable and inconvenient issues like growing violence in society, inequality, youth unrest, protests and the visible lack of job opportunities for young people. There was no mention of the threats posed by artificial intelligence even as the PM spoke glowingly about data centres as the new frontier, while carefully avoiding a mention of the crisis in education. While talking of the urgency to embrace ‘next level reforms’, he did not utter a word on examination reforms.