Not his caustic self, Modi's I-Day speech was tepid cocktail of tediously repetitive tropes

However, the Modi who spoke to the nation from the ramparts of Delhi’s Red Fort this August 15th sounded somewhat different from his confident, combative and caustic self of the past decade. This is not to say that Modi’s over an hour-long I-Day speech was short on either grandiloquent claims over his achievements or on giving a tongue-lashing to his political rivals.

Yet, the diminished mandate that his BJP got in the June Lok Sabha polls making his survival as PM dependent on unreliable crutches of tricky allies and the emergence of a robust and belligerent Opposition seem to have turned Modi's otherwise provocative oratory into a tepid cocktail of tediously repetitive tropes.

Call to countrymen

The Prime Minister seems to have even given a go-by to his past attempts of using the occasion to further endear himself to Indians. If his I-Day speeches of the past decade, hailed citizens as mitron (friends), ‘bhaiyon aur behenon’ (brothers and sisters) and, ultimately as ‘mere parivarjanon’ (my family members) during his address of last year, Modi opted this time for the more generic appellative of ‘deshwasiyon’ (countrymen).

Expectations that his speech would be peppered with headline-grabbing announcements, given that he was now the first Prime Minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to deliver an 11th consecutive I-Day address from the Red Fort, were clearly misplaced.

For the most part, Modi focused on recounting his laurels of the past decade – his all too familiar claims of extracting India from the depths of despair, of helping Indians shed the “chalta hai, aise hi hota hai” (status quo-ist) attitude that past governments had nurtured for 60 years since independence and of making Indians feel proud of being Indian.

In the past, Modi used his I-Day addresses to announce big ticket policy and programme initiatives of his government (Swachh Bharat Mission, Jal Jeevan Mission, Vishwakarma Yojana, to name just a few) and left it to the respective ministries to spell out the nuances later. In contrast, the address on Thursday was shorn of such proclamations and spoke instead of schemes, particularly related to employment generation, all of which finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced in the Union Budget last month.

Need for Uniform Civil Code

The few announcements that Modi did make were largely regurgitation of old poll promises, perhaps, meant more to reassure his own voter base than to catch public attention at large or jolt political rivals. The Prime Minister spoke, yet again, on the need for replacing India’s “communal civil code” with a “secular Uniform Civil Code”.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly discussed the Uniform Civil Code. It has given orders many times because a large section of the country believes, and there is truth in it, that the civil code with which we are living is really a kind of communal civil code, a discriminatory civil code... there should be a wide discussion, everyone should come up with their views, and those laws, which divide the country on the basis of religion, which become the reason for discrimination, such laws cannot have any place in modern society... We have spent 75 years with a communal civil code, now we have to move towards a secular civil code,” Modi said.

While the stress on replacing anything that is communal with something that is secular may sound odd coming from Modi, those who are familiar with the BJP’s political imperatives behind pushing for a UCC would know what the Prime Minister truly meant.

One Nation, One Election

The PM also made a renewed push for his One Nation, One Election pet project. “Frequent elections are creating a problem for the country... One nation, one election is important. I appeal to political parties and those who understand the Constitution that we should move towards one nation, one election,” Modi said.

It may be recalled that a committee headed by former President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, to study the feasibility of conducting simultaneous polls for the Lok Sabha and all state Assemblies had submitted its report to the Centre in March this year, weeks before the general elections commenced. While the panel has expectedly backed Modi’s One Nation, One Election dream, it had recommended that for simultaneous polls to be rolled out, the first step needed was the issuing of a Presidential notification on the first day Parliament is convened following a general election, laying down the last date of the said Lok Sabha.

The 18th Lok Sabha convened first on June 22 but no such notification has been issued since. As such, Modi’s latest push for One Nation, One Election can, at best, be rolled out only after the conclusion of the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.

Other announcements that the PM made in his I-Day speech – appeal to the country’s over 3 lakh public bodies (panchayats, municipal corporations, state governments, et al) to usher in at least two major reforms annually, make India a global hub for design (Design in India, Design for the World) and his oft-repeated push for Viksit Bharat (developed India) by 2047 – were hardly the stuff that his previous addresses from the Red Fort were made of.

War against corruption

The political punches that the Prime Minister sought to pull with his tirade against “parivarvaad” (dynasty politics) and “bhrashtachaar” (corruption) too sounded like a lingering hangover of the Lok Sabha poll campaign and a humdrum rehash of his last I-Day speech, in which he had warned the country against the “three evils” of bhrashtachaar, parivarvaad aur tushtikaran ki rajneeti” (corruption, dynasty and appeasement politics).

His renewed assertion of his “war against corruption” to “create an atmosphere of fear against the corrupt” would, of course, be seen as a warning to his political rivals of a more intense crackdown against them in the days to come. Many leaders of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc are under investigation by various central probe agencies and have maintained that the cases against them are the result of Modi’s vendetta politics.

With a PM and BJP bruised by major setbacks in the recent Lok Sabha polls and now staring at tough electoral battles in states such as Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Haryana and Delhi, the Opposition obviously has reasons to view Modi’s anti-corruption talk as a precursor for renewed crackdowns against them.