From an occasional listener to an addict. That’s my relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Mann Ki Baat, his regular monthly radio programme broadcast to all Indians. Started in 2014 it is going strong after more than 80 editions and where I learned that India’s exports had crossed $400 billion for the first time ever in financial year 2022.
This positive news spurred curiosity and I decided to take a closer look at its historical context, relevance, range, and creativity on the rationale that effective mass communication is an essential attribute of democratic leadership.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
In Western democracies, leaders considered exceptional by their people have communicated directly with their public, or at the very least, to critical audiences.
Three examples were the US Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Lincoln used the just-invented telegraph to communicate directly with his generals in the battlefield. This “transformed the nature of his presidency” and helped Lincoln win the American Civil War.
During World War II, Churchill’s famous wartime broadcasts were avidly listened to. FDR’s so-called “fireside chats” broadcast from March 1933 to June 1944 (33 in total), boosted the confidence of millions of Americans facing depression and war. They lifted his popularity as he became the only President in American history to be elected to four consecutive terms.
The takeaway seems clear: direct and regular broadcasts by democratic leaders can pay rich dividends, both for the country and the leader.
While these examples are not recent, as Western democratic leaders stopped using radio or TV to address the public on a regular basis, they were fresh and recent when India became independent. This raises an inescapable accountability question for Indian democracy: Why didn’t the Dynastic Triad of Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and indeed all Indian Prime Ministers since then, regularly communicate with Indians via the humble but well-established radio?
It didn’t happen and to the contrary, the tool of the regular radio broadcast was abandoned world-wide. That’s how it remained till 2014-when Narendra Modi happened to India. He decided upon the now-stunningly obvious choice and use, as the PM put it in his first talk—”this simple medium of radio”, to eliminate all intermediaries and talk directly to all Indians. Currently, Man Ki Baat is the only programme in the world regularly hosted by a democratic leader aimed at the public. It is truly sui generis.
RELEVANCE
Mann Ki Baat’s relevance can be assessed using the straightforward methodology of gauging the convergence between the issues the PM raises in his talks and India’s development challenges. Taking the nine broadcasts of 2019 as a sample, the PM referred to “water” 73 times, “youth” and “young” 30 and 54 times, respectively, used the word “clean” 28 times and “women” 27 times. Here’s how data validates each of the PM’s choices.
WATER
Astronomers scour distant galaxies for traces of water hoping it may have germinated intelligent life somewhere, but closer to home, which Indian has not heard of the unproductive cough of a dry tap and its tendency towards a miserable trickle? Citizens fight over water as do states, and nations.
Sure enough, data tells us that India has a huge water problem, with 16% of the global population, but only 4% of its fresh water available. Fitting it is then, to hear the PM talk frequently and knowledgably about water, turning the spotlight on some unknown Indian or a community that has revived a dried river or a lake, urging rainwater harvesting, or informing us about the progress in cleaning the Ganga. References to water are relevant not because it is a human right, but because water is life itself.
YOUTH
India is a young country. Unsurprisingly, the United Nations considers that as India’s “social, economic and political development depends on its youth”, “investing in them seems to be the best way to leverage the nation’s competitive advantage for reaping the benefits of the demographic dividend.”
By talking about and including the achievements of this crucial segment of our population in his talks, whose dreams, skills, and abilities will decide what happens to India as it moves into the second half of the 21st century, Mann Ki Baat showed a high-level awareness of the fundamental transformative forces impacting our society.
CLEANLINESS
Nehru and his successors (and we as a people), had ignored Gandhi’s advice to “rid ourselves of our dirty habits and have improved latrines” so thoroughly, that by 2014, “just under 40% of the country’s population had access to a household toilet”. (Incidentally, this government’s achievements have been described as India’s Toilet-Building Revolution.)
Few will disagree with the PM’s frequent emphasis on cleanliness, for we still have a peculiar indifference to public squalor. If you think this assessment is harsh, be assured it does not escape the eye of a first-time foreign visitor, or Indians living abroad.
WOMEN AND GIRLS
Next, it is perhaps superfluous to assess the relevance of the repeated references in Mann Ki Baat to women and girls—a nation cannot progress on a development model for men, of men and by men. The programme includes vignettes of dynamic, girls and women, all achievers with a strong social conscience.
The focus on each of these four issues is a rendezvous with reality.
RANGE AND CREATIVITY
Mann Ki Baat can be rated as off-the-charts in this respect. Examples abound.
Are you interested in medicinal herbal plants? Then, here’s a pitch for them in the September 2021 programme. Before the PM, the only other leader in world history who was interested in medicinal plants for the benefit of the public was Emperor Ashoka. Inscribed in Edict II (one amongst his 14 Major Rock Edicts) are the words “Wherever medical herbs suitable for humans or animals are not available, I have had them imported and grown.”
In effect, Ashoka’s broadcast on medical herbs was via stone edicts and the PM’s are via radio. Can you see them both having a long and deep conversation about Ashwagandha and Tulsi? I can.
Maybe you love dogs? Well, there’s a pitch for Indian breeds including the Indian Mudhol hounds, deployed by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. Or maybe you still have a child in you and love toys? Sure enough, there’s the PM drawing attention to Indian toys and, in an instant, donning the hat of a business consultant and advising of a lucrative business opportunity waiting to be exploited.
Or perhaps your heart aches for India’s cultural heritage, with priceless stolen statues abroad? The programme has fabulous news: India brought back over 200 precious idols from nations like the US, Britain, and Canada after 2014. Nor does the programme shy away from the dark side of life like mental health and advising against the “suppression of depression”.
The programme sparkles with creativity. Has any country’s leader ever interviewed another country’s President on radio? Nobody had, until the PM did so in the January 2015 broadcast with former US President Barack Obama who recognized it as “the first ever Radio address by an Indian Prime Minister and an American President together” and added that “we’re making a lot of history in a short time.”
LARGELY NON-POLITICAL
In addition to their broad range and creativity, another common thread in the issues selected is their largely non-political nature. Admittedly, while politicians can be interested in non-political issues (like Gandhi and Nehru) an elected leader who makes non-political issues the bedrock of his broadcast in his regular communication vehicle to millions of people, is a first in world history.
MANN KI BAAT’S OBJECTIVE
Is there an overriding vision and a strategic objective behind Man Ki Baat? What does the PM hope to achieve? The answer seems evident.
The PM is toiling to sculpt an improved Indian citizen. The easiest way to understand this is to recall R.K. Laxman’s famous cartoon creation—the “Common Man”, who was a silent and voiceless witness to the abundant absurdities and illogic of Indian life.
In Mann Ki Baat, the PM has reincarnated the “Common Man” but with a big difference. He is now the “Uncommon-Common Man or Woman”. For while still they may be “common” in sense they are unknown, but they are uncommon as they are proactive individuals who refused to make peace with their environment but instead applied themselves to improving it. The PM considers such conscientious but ordinary Indians as worthy exemplars. There are countless gems amongst you; shine like them is what the PM is really saying. He wants to decentralize the success of the nation to where it really belongs: to us.
Mann Ki Baat also vividly demonstrates the PM’s confidence and trust in Indians’ capabilities. Michelangelo believed there was a statue inside every stone. Like a sculptor, through Mann Ki Baat the PM is chipping away, showing us in our best possible light as well as dealing with our shortcomings in the nicest and most psychologically acceptable way, until a masterpiece emerges. For the subtle sub-text of his emphasis on cleanliness and entrepreneurship is that we have been insufficiently clean and proactive. There is no smarter way to convey a potentially distasteful message.
Every new idea must step out before the nation to be assessed. Mann Ki Baat is now not just an idea, but a practical reality implemented so thoroughly and consistently that we may miss both its originality and its ambition. I failed to find a single example of a democratically elected leader in world history who had set himself or herself the wildly ambitious and almost impossible task of consistently contributing to and improving the character, the abilities, and the confidence of the public.
DECOLONIZING COMMUNICATION INITIATIVE
Mann Ki Baat is also a long-overdue dry-cleaning of our colonized psyche as it informs millions of what is valuable in our past, not because it is old, but because it is true. If Nehru’s luminous masterpiece The Discovery of India remained recondite to the public, Mann Ki Baat rectifies this by its accessibility, hardwired into its design. It is nothing less than “Rediscovery of India”, simultaneously recording history while making it.
I venture to suggest that the leaders of Western democracies will find much they can apply from this Master Class in direct communication from a democratic leader to the public being conducted in real time.
For the exhilarating exercise that Mann Ki Baat is, I wish to inform the Prime Minister that my Hindi vocabulary has increased rapidly listening to his programme and is now higher than ever, just like India’s exports when they crossed the $400 billion barrier in financial year 2022.
Rahul Sur is a former United Nations official and a former officer of the Indian Police Service. Views expressed are personal.