Independence Day: From Red Fort, reflection of nation's hopes
Since the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, each speech has served as a mirror to the nation's political climate and collective mood.
Nehru's'Tryst with Destiny,' delivered just after midnight on August 15, 1947, remains a memorable Independence Day speech in India's history. It marked the nation's foundational moment, laying out the urgent priorities of tackling poverty, inequality, and the widespread challenges of ignorance and disease.
Indira Gandhi's Independence Day speeches have often been politically charged and sometimes controversial. Her 1972 address focused on the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and celebrated India's victory, boosting national pride. However, her speeches during the Emergency period, particularly in 1975, emphasized national unity and security in ways that were seen as justifications for the imposition of the Emergency, a period marked by curtailment of democratic freedoms.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's addresses have marked a departure from traditional bureaucratic language, bringing a more accessible and interactive style. His first Independence Day speech focused on social reform initiatives such as 'Clean India' and the 'Jan Dhan Yojana,' highlighting efforts to improve governance and citizen welfare.
In 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Modi spoke about the country's health infrastructure, vaccine development, and resilience, reinforcing a message of hope and progress. Modi also set a record by delivering the longest Independence Day speech from the Red Fort in 2024, speaking for 98 minutes.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NDTV
13 minutes ago
- NDTV
NDTV Report: Can Dwarka Expressway End Delhi-Gurugram Traffic Nightmares?
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday inaugurated two major projects -- a key stretch of the Urban Extension Road-II and the Delhi section of Dwarka Expressway - to ease traffic congestion in the city and the National Capital Region (NCR). Here's what NDTV found during the road test of the Dwarka Expressway: The new 10.1-km section of the Dwarka Expressway, developed at Rs 5,360 crore, provides connectivity to Yashobhoomi, the Delhi Metro's Blue and Orange lines, the upcoming Bijwasan railway station, and the Dwarka cluster bus depot. This stretch comprises two sections: a 5.9-km section from the Shiv Murti intersection to the Road Under Bridge at Dwarka Sector-21, and a 4.2-km section from Dwarka Sector-21 to the Delhi-Haryana Border, which provides direct connectivity to the Urban Extension Road-II. It took 20 minutes to travel from one end of the Dwarka Expressway on the Gurugram border to the Mahipalpur region of Delhi. The newly-launched section saves commuters a lot of time on this stretch, but it is the same bottleneck once they enter the Delhi side. It took about 65 minutes from the start of the Dwarka Expressway in Gurugram to reach the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi. Urban Extension Road II The other project Prime Minister Modi opened on Sunday was the Urban Extension Road II (UER 2). The six-lane expressway, which is over 75 km long, starts from NH-44 in Alipur and passes through Rohini, Mundka, Najafgarh, and Dwarka. It ends at Delhi-Gurugram Expressway on NH-48 near Mahipalpur. PM Modi has opened the Alipur-Dichaon Kalan stretch of Urban Extension Road-II with new links to Bahadurgarh and Sonipat. Built at Rs 5,580 crore, it aims at reducing the traffic on the capital's Inner and Outer Ring Roads, and choke points like Mukarba Chowk, Dhaula Kuan and NH-09.
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
13 minutes ago
- Business Standard
PM Modi appeals to all parties to unanimously elect Radhakrishnan as V-P
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday appealed to all parties, including the Opposition, for unanimous election of NDA's vice presidential candidate C P Radhakrishnan, as he praised his life of public service at a meeting of the ruling alliance MPs. Radhakrishnan is likely to file his nomination on Wednesday. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju told reporters that Modi, in his address, appealed to various parties, especially the Opposition, to back Radhakrishnan to ensure that he is elected unanimously. Modi introduced the Maharashtra governor, who is a seasoned BJP leader from Tamil Nadu, to the NDA MPs, citing his long public life in which he served ably in different capacities. Rijiju said Radhakrishnan (67) has led a simple life away from any controversy or taint, stressing that his election as vice president will be a matter of delight for the entire country. PM Modi, allies felicitate Radhakrishnan at NDA parliamentary party meeting The National Democratic Alliance's vice presidential candidate C P Radhakrishnan was felicitated at a meeting of the ruling bloc's MPs here on Tuesday by their top brass, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several BJP allies. With the BJP-led NDA enjoying a comfortable majority in the electoral college comprising MPs from the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, Radhakrishnan's win is a certainty amid indications from the opposition INDIA bloc that it will field its own candidate and force a contest.
The Print
13 minutes ago
- The Print
How Modi's call for self-reliance is different from Nehru's
One, India is a large market, but it is a fraction of the size of the global market. The global trade in just merchandise is around $24 trillion, six times more than India's manufacturing, services and agriculture combined. It limits both ambition and possibilities to consider only the domestic market. Self-reliance is a double-edged sword. As is the oft-repeated fact of India being a large domestic market. In fact, the latter usually reinforces the former. India can be self-reliant because it's large. It doesn't need the world because it has its own market. There are two things to be cautious about in such a narrative. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 12th consecutive address to the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort was peppered with references to Swadeshi, self-reliance and self-respect. In many ways, it resonated with the mood of 1947 more than the zeitgeist of 1991. While there is a wide gulf in the beliefs of Nehru—the only PM to deliver more successive speeches on Independence Day—there is a similarity in the commitment to self-reliance. Nehru's call for self-reliance failed to launch. Can Modi's? It depends on how the vision is translated into reality. Second, there is an element of philosophical protectionism in eschewing global markets. That is what doomed Nehru's vision. Producing goods in India of poor quality and high costs is one way of achieving self-reliance, but it is self-defeating for prosperity. Since 1947, many nations which were worse off than India have surpassed it by some distance. None of them, whether Korea, China or Vietnam, did self-reliance. They aimed to capture global markets, starting with low technology sectors, gradually moving up the value chain. Of the three, China could have also played up its large domestic market card. But it realised that in a mostly low-income country, a large market is a chimaera. Also read: Have we reached a stage where we can say we're proud of India? The data says so The way to self-reliance India's challenge in 2025 is acute. It is attempting to do what no country has done before. It is still striving to build a competitive manufacturing sector, particularly in low-technology, mass-produced goods like textiles, footwear, sports goods, and toys. It is still in catch-up mode. Given today's technological advancements, it has become imperative to build a capability in cutting-edge areas like Artificial Intelligence, advanced semiconductors, modern weaponry, and even electric vehicles. It needs to leapfrog, given how far behind it is, not just over the West but also China and competitors in the East. It has to do all of this in a world which is more reluctant about openness, trade and sharing technology than at any time in the last forty years. The global mood may be insular, but for India, self-reliance has to be paired with global ambition. That is the only way to achieve scale, quality and a cutting edge. Even if world trade doesn't grow by much, India must corner a greater share of the pie. The government also needs to be aware of what needs to be done. For mass manufacturing, the solution lies in policy reform. Without the liberalisation of land and labour markets, rationalisation of power tariffs, lowering of trade barriers, faster clearances, this segment will simply not pick up. Essentially, the government needs to get out of the way. This remains the most crucial sector for creating good-quality jobs for the maximum number of people. In the high-technology sectors, a different approach is required. There is room for industrial policy, but of an American kind, not an East Asian kind. The government needs to commit its financial resources and use the might of its procurement capacity. To its credit, it has adopted the right approach in semiconductors by spending almost $10 billion in subsidies. However, it largely supports testing and packaging units at the low end of the value chain, as it did in assembly in mobile phones. The only chipmaker among the projects is the Tata enterprise in Dholera. There needs to be a great degree of risk-taking on the part of the government if India is to leapfrog. In semiconductors, it will otherwise take too long to even catch up, forget getting ahead. In its defence, the government has invested in the right foreign platforms but needs to enable a transition to R&D by Indian companies and develop better indigenous platforms on top of those international platforms. The good news is that, unlike Nehru, Modi has chosen to put the private sector in front. He believes in India's entrepreneurship. He is open to using industrial policy without intrusive government control, not the case in the 1950s and 1960s. The PLI is an excellent example. He is also choosing to be more selective about the priority sectors for self-reliance. In his speech, he spoke about energy, critical minerals, electronics, defence and fertilisers. That is a more strategic approach than Nehru's across-the-board one. He has spoken about self-reliance in terms of capability, which is also refreshing rather than just the large domestic market argument. Now, it's over to implementation. As long as we have eyes on the global market and the right role of government, Self-Reliance 2.0 may just work out well. Dhiraj Nayyar is Chief Economist at Vedanta. His X handle is @nayyardhiraj. Views are personal. (Edited by Theres Sudeep)
