Modi tries to correct critics, including RSS

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hour-long speech at a mega rally in Uttar Pradesh, a day ahead of his government completing one year in office, is seen by many party leaders as a “corrective” response to his critics within the larger BJP family including the RSS as well as the opposition.

He also did a lot of recall of old times — the situation that was prevailing under the UPA dispensation that eventually led to his winning the huge mandate.

Modi’s choice of the venue – the birth place of late BJP’s ideologue Deendayal Upadhayay – was itself to send home the message that no RSS functionary need to remind him of the need to keep the poor in mind, the BJP leaders said. 

Upadhaya was the author of the RSS political philospophy of nurturing “antodaya” (the poorest of the poor), which was the founding principle of the earlier avatar Jan Sangh.  
In a spirited defence of the last 12 months, Modi said he followed Upadhyay’s advice:  ‘charaiveti, charaiveti, charaiveti’ — to keep walking without stopping, without bending.

For once, Modi did not refer to his foreign jaunts, which have often dominated his public discourses, inviting scorn and commentary that he was more happy abroad than at home.
Secondly, contrary to speculation in sections of the media, Modi did not announce any new schemes. Instead, he reiterated every single welfare measure undertaken by the government like the Jan Dhan Yojna, the proposed soil card for farmers, and unlocking of frozen provident funds.

He skirted the issue of the new land acquisition bill.
More importantly, the big takeaway from his speech was that he was no ardent fan of big corporates in the belief that they would alone generate jobs.

Instead, Modi brought focus to his government’s flagship Mudra Bank scheme to finance small traders, artisans and entrepreneurs. He detailed how his government has spent the last year one year working for the poor.

In doing so, Modi underscored what he considers his best feat so far — a scam free governance.

“If elections were to be held today instead of last year, we would have had a new scam, a new corruption case, every other day. In the last one year of my government, have you heard of even a single scam, or of control of leadership through remote control? Or loot of coal and spectrum? So, did the bad days go away or not?”

Modi said he had broken the well-entrenched power circles in Delhi where corrupt middlemen hobnobbed with politicians. "Such people are facing "bure din" (bad days) now. I did not provide a guarantee to usher in good days for them," he said.

Modi prouduly mentioned  the auctioning of coal mines, which happened after the Supreme Court ruled that the previous government had given them away for a price way lower than the market price.

With Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi making the distress of farmers as his new plank for reviving the party, Modi also turned to programmes for farmers and the poor. "Three lakh farmers committed suicide in the last 60 years. I don’t want to talk about which party is responsible for this," he said, claiming that he did not want to politicise the issue.