When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addresses the nation this morning from the ramparts of the Red Fort, the people of India would want to hear from him what he plans to do in the next four years of his term in office, rather than a list of achievements. Indeed, even more than the government’s plans, his television audience across the country and beyond would want to understand Dr Singh’s view of the nature of the challenges India is likely to face in the second decade of the 21st century, the kind of opportunities at hand, and what the government and the people of India can do to make use of the opportunities to overcome the likely challenges. Time was when a prime minister like Jawaharlal Nehru spoke extempore, from the heart, and gave a glimpse of his mind to the enthusiastic people of Delhi who stood before him on a humid morning. Today, the prime minister has a global audience.
The Independence Day speech is the only annual national address of the prime minister. It is a mix of a State of the Union address and a National Day address. But these speeches can easily slide into the banal and the pedestrian. Indeed, over the years they have tended to vacillate between the government-speak of joint secretaries in the prime minister’s office and political statements drafted by political aides. Dr Singh has tried to strike a balance between a political budget speech, a State of the Union speech and a foreign policy statement. In his very first address, in August 2004, he confessed to the nation, paraphrasing Walt Whitman, that he had no promises to make but only promises to keep. In subsequent years he has devoted more attention to the promises he has kept. Last year he spoke mostly about them, celebrating his return to office.
What should Dr Singh be saying this year? He would be speaking to a young India that is still full of hope. A recent global poll on popular attitudes showed that Indians are the world’s most optimistic people. The flame of hope for a better tomorrow burns brightly in every Indian, including the distraught and the dispossessed. Defying the cynicism of the chattering classes, who so populate the media, Indians, overcoming the lived experience of corruption, tyranny and inefficiency in their daily lives, remain an optimistic people. Hence, an Independence Day speech must build on that optimism and show the way forward to a nation moving at an unprecedented speed, possibly as the world’s fastest growing economy.
It is in the nature of a democracy that its mandate needs constant renewal. Each generation of voters must rediscover for itself the value and values of freedom. The value of freedom from tyranny and its liberating power has to be experienced for it to be cherished. Thirty years after India’s Independence, in 1977, the people of India rediscovered the power of freedom when they overthrew Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi’s ‘emergency regime’ and renewed Indian democracy. A new generation of Indians celebrated freedom in its own way and understood through its own experience the importance of the original movement for national liberation. Thirty-three years later, India can consider itself lucky that there has not been another such lurch into tyranny, but many may be worrying that today there is too much freedom, bordering on anarchy. The challenge before India’s political leadership is to channel the energy of its people into constructive nation-building. How he intends to do this should be the prime minister’s message this Independence Day.
