With a speech every 45.6 hours, has Modi exhausted his talk-time?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers a speech or makes a public statement every 1.9 days or every 45.6 hours. In reality, though, he takes to the microphone at a rate more frequent than these figures indicate.

My statistical analysis is based on the data available on two websites – www.pmindia.gov.in and www.narendramodi.in

This statistical analysis has also not taken into account data such as the Prime Minister’s reply to the Motion of thanks to the President’s address to the Lok Sabha, his remarks on the Budget, his statement to the media before every Parliamentary session, and before he jets off abroad.

A penchant for spectacle?

The two websites have updated their data till May 1, 2016, that is, for the 706 days Modi has been prime minister. During this period he delivered 219 speeches at launches of schemes, anniversaries, inaugurations or foundation-stone laying ceremonies, and some election rallies at home.

In addition to this, Modi made 144 speeches at international meets and public receptions abroad. This includes statements to the media with his foreign counterparts either when he was visiting them or when he hosted them.

Taken together, the prime minister delivered a whopping 363 speeches and statements over 706 days. This works out to a speech every 1.9 days or, to be very precise, every 45.6 hours.

In his 706 days as prime minister, Modi launched or inaugurated 41 programmes or schemes. These also include the prime minister dedicating to the nation projects initiated by the previous Congress-led government but completed during his tenure.

Some of these are Modi’s pet projects, such as Skill India, Startup India, Standup India, Swachh Bharat Mission, Jan Dhan Yojana, Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao and so on. Nineteen of these had rural India or agriculture and renewable energy as its focus. No doubt, these projects are of great significance to the nation.

But there are also glimpses of the prime minister’s penchant for spectacle. For instance, critics might wonder whether it behooves the Prime Minister to inaugurate a project like the Badarpur-Faridabad extension of the Delhi Metro or, for that matter, even the expansion of the Rourkela Steel Plant, a public sector unit. Metros are now an old development trope and his government does not seem to repose much faith in public undertakings.

Modi has attended 16 foundation stone-laying ceremonies. Three of these pertained to Dr BR Ambedkar. He also laid the foundation stone for Amaravati, the new capital of the truncated Andhra Pradesh.

It was perhaps the politics of votes that saw Modi lay the foundation stone for the Delhi-Dasna-Meerut Expressway and the upgradation of the Dasna-Hapur section of NH-24 at the end of last year. These two sections constitute a stretch in western Uttar Pradesh, so crucial for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s electoral prospects in the state that goes to the polls in 2017.

Again, he laid the foundation stone of the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Guwahati, just two months before the state went to the polls. But he doesn’t just focus on poll-bound states. After Bihar handed an ignominious defeat to the BJP in late 2015, Modi attended the ceremony for building rail projects in Hajipur, which is the constituency of his ally, Ram Vilas Paswan.

Inaugurations, celebrations

Before the prime minister’s educational qualifications became a matter of raging controversy, he attended 15 functions relating to education. He attended the centenary convocation of the Benaras Hindu University, the only campus to host him twice, as also those of three prestigious medical hospital-research centres. This perhaps underscores the importance of the modern system of treatment in Modi’s worldview.

But he didn’t forget to emphasise the traditional system of medicine – he attended five functions on yoga and ayurveda.

For a person who secured his MA in political science, none of the purely liberal arts institutions figures on the list of campuses Modi visited. But he seems to have more than made it up with book launches and participation in literary functions – nine in all.

He released five books – two by the President, including one on Presidential Retreats; one on Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader Nanaji Deshmukh, another by a Jain acharya titled Maru Bharat Saru Bharat (My India Noble India), and a digital version of the Ramcharitmanas.

Modi lectured the Bombay Art Society, the 10th World Hindi Conference and was the chief guest at the 50th Jnanpith Award Ceremony. Five foreign universities hosted the Prime Minister – two of these were in China, one each in Japan, Kazakhastan and Fiji.

Modi’s foreign visits created tremendous buzz, none more than the receptions accorded to him by the India diaspora. There were 21 such receptions. Those at the Madison Square Gardens in New York and the Wembley Stadium in London had the flavour of a rock show.

For a BJP prime minister, celebrations organised by religious-cultural organisations have always had a special salience. Modi attended 10 of these. In the months before Assam had its Assembly elections, he attended the 85th annual conference of Srimanta Sankaradeva Sangha, whose founder Sankardeva (1449-1518 CE) is said to have Sanskritised ethnic groups in Assam. The Prime Minister was there at the 192nd birth anniversary celebrations of the Arya Samaj founder, Dayanand Saraswati.

Religion-wise, six of these celebrations were linked to Hinduism, two to Buddhism, and one each to Islam and Christianity. He addressed the World Sufi Forum earlier this year, and in February last year, participated in a function in Delhi that was organised to celebrate the elevation of Father Kuriakose Elias Chavara and Mother Euphrasia to sainthood.

Over-exposure?

Indeed, a speech every 1.9 days or 45.6 hours is an incredible feat for the prime minister of the world’s biggest democracy. Modi’s supporters would feel it is a testament to his inexhaustible energy, his desire to connect with the masses, his resolve to engage them in the economic transformation of India, and to demonstrate to the public that his government is working overtime.

Modi’s detractors would interpret the same statistical details to reach the opposite conclusion.

They would say a speech every 45.6 hours testify to the streak of narcissism in him, a point former BJP minister Arun Shourie recently made; that Modi has a propensity to stay in the spotlight and wants to dwarf other BJP leaders.

They would say for a prime minister making a public statement every 1.9 days, it was shocking that he refuses to speak, or even fleetingly mention, issues that agitate people. Nor has he ever ticked off the Sangh Parivar footsoldiers for triggering social tension.

It is difficult to gauge the consequences of Modi delivering speeches to the public at the rate he does. It could be a factor why he dominates approval ratings in just about every opinion poll.

But Modi’s could also be a case of overexposure. He runs the risk of sounding repetitive and stale – an example of which a journalist-friend cites.

When Modi was hopping from one place to another during the Bihar election campaign last year, there were many there who borrowed a term from the mobile telephony parlance to joke – “The Prime Minister doesn’t know his talk-time is over.” In politics, action ultimately counts, not words.

Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist in Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, is available in bookstores.