Here is what PM Modi should speak about this I-Day

It is August 15th, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will wear a colourful headgear (last year he was dressed in a red polka dotted one) and address the nation from the ramparts of the Lal Qila. 

Like last year, he is again crowd-sourcing his speech. Considering that India has over 200 million internet users, two days before India’s 70th Independence Day, just a little over 2000 have sent in their suggestions to the prime minister. 

In 2015, the words he used most were 'country' (76), 'India' (68) and 'brother and sister' (37 each). 

If he pays attention to the few suggestions that have come in, then this year he may want to add words like ‘Dalit’, ‘Gaurakshak’ and ‘Kashmir’. They have suggested that he also add 'Muslims' and 'religious fanaticism'. (Actually, he could add Subramanian Swamy and Smriti Irani too)

My suggestion to the prime minister would be to begin by saying ‘sorry’ - 

• For all the people who lost their eyesight in pellet injuries in Kashmir
• For the people who died in various terrorist attacks
• For the men and women across the country being lynched and flogged by cow vigilantes
• For the several dead and millions displaced by flood and other natural disasters
• For the uninterrupted cases of sexual assault
• For the fake encounters
• To the 3000 children who die every day because of hunger
• To the farmers who were forced to commit suicide
• To the lakhs of undertrials languishing in jails of the country 
• To the millions of children born on the streets deprived of every single right. 

The list is endless.

Under the circumstances, he should just deliver an honest speech rather than a boring CEO kind of report card listing achievements. 

From his 2014 campaign’s opening line of “devalay nahi sauchalay”, prime minister Modi has launched at least 25 more ‘yojanas’ from ‘Digital India’ to ‘Make in India’. I suspect he shall invoke many of them to demonstrate the marketing potential of  ‘brand India’. (He may just declare that instead of the lion in his Make in India now we will have the cow instead!)

If Mr Modi understands the pulse of the people (which he claims), then his speech should address just one word, “Inequality” and assure a basic and modest set of social security guarantees, universal pension, primary healthcare, child benefits and employment. 

He must recognise the need for a social contract between the government and the citizens where there is human dignity.  

And as he prepares his speech he may want to go over this statement, or perhaps just quote it verbatim:

“On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics, we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics, we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy...”  

This famous speech by Dr BR Ambedkar from November 25, 1949, has been invoked again and again. 

69 years later, one must say he got it so right. 

Bhattacharjee is a senior journalist and author. His most recent book is Blood on my Hands: Confessions of Staged Encounters (Harper Collins 2015).  The views expressed here are his own.