Last Modified: Tue, Aug 16 2016. 08 17 AM IST
Used 7 times in Monday’s speech, the phrase middle class was completely absent from Narendra Modi’s earlier Independence Day speeches
Karthik Shashidhar
It is clear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s favourite phrase, as far as Independence Day speeches are concerned, is “brothers and sisters”; but this isn’t particularly relevant as there are other phrases which are far more important. Photo: PTI
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day address on Monday was his longest ever, with the official copy of the English translation running to 9,367 words. In fact, the length of his Independence Day speeches (measured in English word length) has increased over the last three years.
The most used word (excluding commonly used “stop words” such as “the” and “for”) across the three speeches has been “country”, which has been used a total of 207 times. The next most commonly used word is “India”. Interestingly, while the use of the word “country” has remained high over the years, the use of “India” has fallen drastically in this year’s speech, down to 46 instances, from 70 in 2015.
Table 3 shows the top 10 words Modi has used in his last three Independence Day speeches.
It is evident from the list that most of these words are generic in nature, and don’t convey much about intended policy choices. In order to understand any policy direction or implications of the speech, we should look at the differences between this year’s speech and previous years’ speeches.
Each year, the choice of words used in the speech reflects the policy choices of the government of the day. So what words did the Prime Minister use this year that he didn’t in the last two years?
Table 2 has the list of the words that the Prime Minister used at least five times this year, which he had not used in the last two years.
Again, while some of these words are of a generic nature (impossible, thousands), some others give a definite indication of shifts in the government’s policies. For instance, the word “solar” finds a mention six times, highlighting the emphasis this government has placed on solar energy.
It is interesting to note that the Prime Minister made a mention of terrorism, a topic he had eschewed the last two years, in this year’s speech. It is also interesting to see pulses and Aadhaar, the unique ID number that has become the cornerstone of many of the government’s policies, in the list (to be precise, last year’s speech contained one mention of “Aadhaar”. This year’s speech had seven). There were no mentions of Aadhaar in 2014.
Single words, however, tell only so much of the story while describing a speech. The true indicator of possible policy direction in a speech can be gleaned by looking at phrases.
Table 1 contains the 10 most used phrases across the last three Independence Day speeches. It is clear the PM’s favourite phrase, as far as Independence Day speeches are concerned, is “brothers and sisters”, but this isn’t particularly relevant. There are other phrases which are far more important.
For instance, the phrase “middle class”, used seven times on Monday, was completely absent from Modi’s earlier Independence Day speeches, perhaps highlighting an attempt to reach out to a segment many political parties usually ignore. There were also six mentions of “Guru Gobind Singh Ji” in Monday’s speech, perhaps aimed at next year’s elections in Punjab.
Interestingly, “Team India”, which Modi used 32 times in last year’s speech, was completely absent from this year’s edition. Similarly, “black money”, which was mentioned nine times last year, failed to find a mention this year.