Apprehensions had been expressed, rightly so, about children in schools being compelled to be Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s audience on Teachers’ Day. It was clearly not going to be an entirely voluntary exercise, with schools rescheduling timings and many issuing stern warnings to ensure that students listened to the PM. Modi sounded well-meaning but stilted as he spoke of the importance of the teacher and called for a “jan aandolan (people’s movement)” for “rashtra nirman (national reconstruction)”. Then, the PM’s speech concluded, students were invited to ask him questions, and the afternoon’s tenor changed. As he answered his “bal mitron (young friends)”, Modi was the consummate performer and communicator he has shown himself to be with other audiences. He talked to them without condescension, through stories that had morals, and shared anecdotes. He wove in the personal with the political. Of course, the spotlight remained solely on him, not on the teachers or the students. Yet, a cultivated remoteness and hauteur had been pierced. A new line was etched, one that connected, for the first time in a young nation, the school and its student with the prime minister and national concerns.
Of course, Manmohan Singh’s inscrutability and uncommunicativeness had set the bar unnaturally low. Then, the symbolism was carefully crafted, with Modi taking questions from students from Leh to Port Blair and Imphal to Bhuj via Bastar. And for many in his young audience, the Modi pathshala (classroom) stretched too long. Yet, on Teachers’ Day, as the PM spoke to school students, he made his office more real and “the people” less of an abstraction.
