Mann ki Baat: Dialogue of hope and empowerment

NEW DELHI: It was October 2014, and a new Prime Minister had settled into his South Block office. Unlike many of his predecessors, Narendra Modi came from a humble background, and had spent years of his life moving across the country by bus or train, carrying his possessions with him from place to place. In the process, he met countless people, experienced their culture, attitudes to life and a medley of vegetarian cuisine. Those years were for him a preparation for what was to come. In 2001, seeing the quiet way in which he went about the work assigned to him by the BJP, its central leadership decided to put the key western state of Gujarat under his care. His predecessor, Keshubhai Patel, had lost his steam, and was content to coast along at a slower and slower pace, dragging the favorability rating of the BJP ever lower. The Congress Party was at the time entrenched within each part of the state, and was sensing that the BJP was vulnerable. Once made Chief Minister, Modi fought and won the Rajkot Assembly seat, and it was found that the share of the Muslim vote in his victory was much more than was the case for other BJP candidates. There was something about this individual, who was steeped in the best form of knowledge about a society, that gained by participation and experience in that society. His securing an unexpectedly large proportion of the Muslim vote in Rajkot tolled warning bells for the Congress Party, which had long regarded that vote as being securely in its corner. Just months after taking over as Chief Minister, a group of rioters set fire to the compartment of a train that was filled with those who had gone to Ayodhya to carry forward their long-cherished dream of rebuilding the Ram Mandir at the site of Lord Ram’s birth, the earlier shrine having been demolished on the instructions of Emperor Aurangzeb. The sight of the pilgrims being burnt alive set free passions that in Gujarat had never been far from the surface, and for a couple of days, there were uncontrollable paroxysms of violence. It was not the first or the worst such riot that had taken place in Gujarat, but those few days became a handy bludgeon to use by rivals to try and wean back the Muslim vote from Modi. Even at that time, Congress leaders such as Ahmed Patel understood that Modi had the potential to weaken the Congress Party substantially in the state and later the country. In their effort to checkmate Modi, his detractors began to weave a narrative around the new Chief Minister that was intended to damage his name not just in India but globally.
In Gujarat, the effect of such propaganda was slight. As Chief Minister, Modi had begun touring the state to find out what the problems and issues plaguing the people of the state were, and was working late nights to ensure that solutions were found and implemented. Over time, people from other states who were visiting Gujarat would report to folks back home about the difference that its Chief Minister was making. By 2012, such anecdotes had created a groundswell of interest and appreciation for Narendra Modi across the country that made him the inevitable Prime Ministerial choice of the BJP by the initial months of 2013 in the next year’s Lok Sabha polls.
What attracts people to Narendra Modi? It is that he believes in India and in the people of our country. He believes that they are capable of miracles, once infused with hope and direction. His own story reflects this truth. That a lad from a humble background in a village named Vadnagar in Gujarat could in later years become one of the Big Four in the international community (together with President Biden, General Secretary Xi and President Putin). Prime Minister Modi believes that the lessons that he has learnt, the approaches and attitudes that have become second nature to him, can be transferred to tens if not hundreds of millions of citizens across the country. That together, he and they have the capacity to begin a chain reaction that will conclude with India joining the US and China in the 21st century’s superpower league. It is to set in motion just such a chain reaction in India’s 1.4 billion citizens that Prime Minister Narendra Modi initiated “Mann ki Baat” on 3 October 2014. Since then, this informal radio chat to countless millions of homes gets aired on the last Sunday of each month, with the hundredth episode this week. Estimates are that more than 90% of the population of the country have heard of the monthly talks, and that each time, sometimes as many as 450 million people listen in.
This may seem a strange question, given Narendra Modi’s unprecedented success in politics, but the question comes up in those who have tracked his entire career, and not just the years spent first as Chief Minister of Gujarat and now as Prime Minister of India. That he would be happier as a Guru, talking to listeners in a simple ashram in the mountainside. For what is being expressed in Mann ki Baat are not the views of the Pradhan Mantri (or Pradhan Sevak, as he prefers to be known), but the thoughts of a citizen sharing his dreams and hopes with his 1.4 billion fellow citizens. In every episode of Mann ki Baat, we catch a glimpse of the ideas that motivate Narendra Modi as he goes about his awesome responsibilities. We begin to not just understand his dreams but start to share them. We sense his confidence in ourselves as a people, and begin to develop that same self-assurance ourselves. Each episode of Mann ki Baat is a lesson in hope, trust, empowerment and citizenship, which is why in homes across India, friends and family gather around the radio as their Pradhan Sevak, their close friend, well-wisher and teacher, talk in his gentle informal tone to them. Ever so often Modi introduces them through the program to other citizens, people who were never expected to amount to anything, people who official India never looked at, and yet who achieved deeds that helped many, deeds that brought them to the attention and admiration of the Prime Minister of India himself.
Classrooms across the world need to teach the stories told in the Panchatantra or the Hitopadesa. For each story is a lesson in life. Just as every episode of Mann ki Baat is. As we listen to Narendra Modi’s words, we sense the optimism of the young lad in Vadnagar in Gujarat, who looked beyond the straitened circumstances of his life and who willed himself to work so as to improve the lives of as many as he could touch with his words and deeds, which these days is the entire country. In Mann ki Baat there can be found a pathway to the empowerment that follows the setting of a clear direction in life, and the acquiring of a will to follow it, no matter how difficult the present may be. There are no divisive streaks in the dialogue, no segmenting of society on grounds of region, religion, education or income. After all, every human being has some good and some not so good qualities, making each of us in some way the same as any other. Whether it be the formation of a startup or an improvement in class grades, or higher productivity at work or a more respectful, a more accommodative attitude to others, especially those in need, such attitudes have been seeded in the Mann ki Baat talks. May there be a hundred more, may this monthly dialogue between Narendra Modi and his extended family, which is no less than the entire Indian nation, continue to infuse within us the discernment, the confidence, that made the young lad from Vadnagar what he is today. That is making India what it will be tomorrow, a superpower in both material as well as ethical terms.