THE eleventh Independence Day Red Fort address of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was his longest so far and it was the most disappointing by his own standards. 

The bulk of the speech was a litany of achievements of his government beginning from Swachh Bharat to Jal Jeevan Mission to renewable energy and reforms which also included the strengthening of the banking sector.  All these were encapsulated with a vague talk of a `Viksit Bharat’ by 2047.

Some of the claims made about the achievements have no basis in reality.  For instance, on renewable energy, he claimed “India has achieved more in this sector than the G 20 nations collectively”.  On what this claim is based is unknown. 

Being the first Independence Day speech after coming back to office for a third term, one would have expected Modi to spell out what are the new approaches or policies that his government will pursue, but there was nothing of that sort.  The only assurance was that we are heading towards a “Golden Era for Bharat”. 

On the key question of employment generation, which had emerged as one of the major issues in the Lok Sabha election, Modi declared that, for youth, “countless new employment opportunities are now at their doorstep” without specifying what these opportunities are.  The only thing his government has done is the announcement of a set of employment-linked incentive schemes in the union budget. These schemes provide for internship in the 500 top companies for a year with government subsidising a portion of the wage component from the public exchequer.  However, the workers will be recruited only for one year, which will mean that they are fixed term and a fresh batch will be recruited without regularising those trained for a year.  This will, in no way, resolve the unemployment problem of the youth. 

In the only other reference to employment, Modi states that the manufacturing sector is crucial for addressing unemployment and then promises that “the day is not far when India will become an industrial manufacturing hub”.  But the record of the manufacturing sector and industrial growth does not inspire much confidence in this regard. As per government data, manufacturing sector’s share in GDP has fallen from 15 per cent in financial year 2014 to 13 per cent in financial year 2024. In a written reply in the Lok Sabha on July 25, 2024, the concerned minister has stated that 317,641 jobs were lost due to the closure of nearly 50,000 MSMEs in the last ten years.  So Modi’s boast of India becoming a global industrial hub sounds hollow. 

While talking about the war against corruption, there is a curious reference to how his fight against corruption has come at a price – “it cost me my reputation”.  He then goes on to say that his fight against corruption will continue “with complete sincerity and at a fast pace”.  This is the most hypocritical assertion in the entire speech.  The last year has seen how Modi has gone to great lengths to protect Gautam Adani and his group of companies from the serious charges of corporate corruption and violation of laws.  Even now, his government is going all-out to protect the SEBI chairperson, who faces charges of having compromised the investigation into the Adani group.  For Modi, the war on corruption amounts to hounding opposition leaders by unleashing the ED and the CBI to file false cases against them.

Even though Modi has assumed the prime ministership, after his party has lost its majority in the Lok Sabha, he wants to signal that the core agenda of the RSS-BJP will be pursued.  The three issues set-out as the core agenda of the BJP were: abolition of Article 370, the Ram temple at Ayodhya and a uniform civil code.  With the first two accomplished, Modi has now announced that it is time to take up the uniform civil code. He has termed it as a secular civil code as against the communal civil code, which has prevailed for the past 75 years. 

For the BJP and the RSS, a uniform civil code is not to bring about gender equality within the different religious communities, for which reforms in the personal laws would have been the first step to be taken.  Instead, the uniform civil code is targeted at the Muslim community.  The BJP government had already made it clear that the personal laws of tribal communities will be outside the purview of the uniform civil code.  If the Uttarakhand uniform civil code is anything to go by, then its provisions are a direct assault on an adult women’s sexual autonomy and is a legal license for moral policing and vigilantism. Any attempt to impose such a regressive uniform civil code will be met with the stiffest resistance from the secular and democratic forces. 

It appears that Modi and the BJP have not absorbed the lessons of the Lok Sabha verdict. One of the reasons the BJP lost seats was the fear that, if it got 400 plus seats, then they would go all-out to change the constitution and its basic features. It was, therefore, surprising that Modi harped on his pet idea of `One Nation, One Election’ in his speech. The implementation of this scheme would require a series of amendments to the constitution and the extant laws. The BJP is in no position to get such constitutional amendments through both houses of parliament where, along with its allies, it lacks a two-third majority. Yet, Modi clings on to his dream of a `Golden Bharat’, which is nothing but a Hindutva authoritarian State.

(August 21, 2024)