WORD'S WORTH

Looking at the evolution of Prime Minister Modi through his 10 Independence Day speeches

- ARCHIS MOHAN

On August 15, 2014, in his first Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced himself to the people as a “boy from a small-town poor family”, an outsider to Delhi’s elite circles, someone they should think of not as the country’s prime minister but its “pradhan sevak”, the prime servant. 

Modi was then less than 100 days into his new job. Ten Independence Day speeches later, with Parliament elections looming next year, much has changed.

In 2018, in his fifth address from the Red Fort, the last of his first term as prime minister, Modi felt the need to furnish his report card, spending substantial time on the speed with which his government had implemented schemes, which he termed a paradigm shift from 2013.

But on Tuesday, delivering his 10th Independence Day address, the last of his second term as prime minister, Modi said the current period of "reform, perform and transform", a phrase he first used in the 2016 speech, would strengthen the foundation of the coming thousand years, and promised to list the government's achievements "next time on August 15, from this very Red Fort", suggesting the results of next year's elections were a foregone conclusion.