Independence Day: PM sets tone for 2019 polls, promises development for all

Expectedly, the PM also gave a report card of sorts of his government's 51-months in office

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort, his fifth and final of the current term, was replete with references to his government’s commitment to the welfare of the poor and clearly delivered with an eye on the forthcoming assembly elections to three key north Indian states and the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. 

In his 82-minute speech, the PM gave a report card of four years of his government’s policies and programmes, comparing it with that of the United Progressive Alliance-2 (UPA-2) at the same stage in 2013. 

Modi said he had provided decisive governance, not the UPA-2’s policy paralysis — the subtext being how the “chaotic” days of the previous regime might return if a motley group of political leaders and parties were to form the government in 2019.

The PM pointed to the implementation of the goods and services tax (GST), increase in the minimum support price for farmers, ‘one rank one pension’ for defence personnel, and enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and Benami properties law as evidence of a decisive and firm government. 

But the PM also crafted his speech in a way that the people think of the 2019 elections as a fait accompli and look beyond to share his dream of a ‘navyug’, or ‘new era’, a ‘new India’, in 2022, when farm incomes would get doubled with the help of technology and an Indian astronaut would travel in space aboard ‘Gaganyaan’. The US and Russia achieved the feat 57 years back in 1961 and China in 2003. 

The PM announced that the Ayushman Bharat health assurance scheme would be launched on September 25, the birth anniversary of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) icon Deendayal Upadhyaya, and provide Rs 500,000 of health cover to 100 million poor families, that is 500 million people, which he said was the combined population of the US, Canada and Mexico or that of the continent of Europe.  

Modi said the leitmotif of four years of his government had been to empower the poor. He claimed that an international organisation, which he didn’t identify, had come out with a report that states as many as 50 million Indians had come out of poverty in the last two years.

The PM also said the ‘Clean India campaign’, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, had saved lives of 300,000 children. 

Modi said it was not “power brokers” who roam the corridors of power in Delhi, but India’s capital city now reverberated with the voice of the “poor”. 

Apart from the poor, the PM also reached out to women. He said Indian society needed to be liberated from the “clutches” of its “demonic attitude” and “perversion” towards crimes against women, particularly rape. He said fast track courts had recently given death sentence to rapists, and this news should be spread far and wide. 
 

He announced that women officers in India’s defence forces could soon exercise the option of taking up permanent commission through the short service commission. Modi said there were now three women judges in the Supreme Court, and that as many women had never been part of any union council of ministers as were in the one he led.

The closest the PM came to raising an issue that is construed by some as ‘polarising’ was when he reiterated his government’s commitment to ensure justice for Muslim women by doing away with the practice of ‘triple talaq’, and how “some people” continued to oppose it during the just concluded Monsoon session of Parliament. 

On jobs, for which his government has received much criticism, Modi said Mudra bank loans to 130 million people had fostered self-employment in several sectors. He said as many as 40 million had received any loan from a financial institution for the first time in their lives. He said young people were setting up start-ups and other businesses in Tier 2 and 3 cities. 

Modi said 300,000 service centres in as many villages were being run by young people, and the health assurance would encourage setting up of hospitals in Tier 2 and 3 cities, which, in turn, would generate jobs. 

The PM referred to the gram swaraj abhiyan that has covered 65,000 villages in 117 aspirational districts by ensuring delivery of seven government schemes. He said Rs 900 billion had been saved by identifying 60 million non-existent beneficiaries of welfare schemes. 

The PM also reached out to taxpayers. He said it was thanks to each taxpayer that three families of poor get subsidized food. Modi said his government was committed to rooting out corruption, and the power brokers that pulled the strings of previous governments had been booted out from the corridors of power. 

The PM said the country had celebrated the “festival of honesty” since 2014. He said the number of direct taxpayers had increased from 40 million in 2013 to 67.5 million now. He said in the 70 years since independence, people in the indirect tax net were 7 million, which increased to 11.6 million in one year after the GST implementation. 

The PM also spoke at some length about his government’s development works in the northeastern states and the removal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, or AFSPA, from Tripura, Meghalaya and some parts of Arunachal Pradesh. The northeastern states elect 25 members to the Lok Sabha, and the BJP is hopeful of winning a majority of those seats, along with its allies, to compensate for some of the losses that it is likely to suffer in the Hindi speaking states. 

The PM spoke of his government’s commitment to Vajpayee’s tenets of preserving democracy and Kashmiriyat in Jammu and Kashmir, and said panchayat and urban local body elections would be held in the state this year so that the money from the Centre directly reached villages. 

Modi said he was besabra, bechain, vyakul, vyagra, adheer and aatur (impatient, worried and keen) that India surpassed the countries which had marched ahead, that there was an end to malnourishment among children of the country, the poor got health insurance cover, and that India led the fourth industrial revolution. 

The PM said the economy had looked up in the last four years. Experts across the world, he said, had sat up to take notice of India as a bright investment destination. 
 

He said India was now the sixth largest economy. 

As the PM wrapped up his speech, Modi said his government was committed to delivering “housing for all, power for all, water for all, sanitation for all, skill for all, health for all, insurance for all and connectivity for all”.