There was also a pat on the back of the volunteers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) without naming them.
“There are so many people and organisations that work quietly and diligently for the poor and the disadvantaged. They could be running schools for street children, caring for stray animals and birds, and providing water to hard-to-reach tribal communities in remote areas. Or cleaning rivers and public places. They are nation builders in action, and we need to draw inspiration from them,” he said. He extolled selflessness as the greatest individual virtue.
Kovind’s speech made no mention of business, capitalism or industry only emphasising the national duty to pay tax and extolling both demonetisation and the rollout of the goods and services tax.
He asked citizens to pay taxes honestly as that contributed to India’s development.
Kovind’s social message was that India must strive to be a compassionate society: towards Scheduled Castes and Tribes, and towards those Indians who lived in the Northeast and were not understood by the rest of India. He also batted for an egalitarian society that did not discriminate on the basis of gender or religion.
He asked Indians to be nationalists — by preparing for a sterling performance at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Although a motherhood and apple pie speech, in essence it was a distillation of Buddhism.
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