He came, he spoke, he conquered India's hearts: Global media on PM's I-Day speech

PM Modi’s Independence Day speech seems to have hit the right buttons with almost all of the international media choosing to highlight issues such as women, sanitation, infanticide, which figured prominently in his speech, while some also chose to describe Modi’s sartorial preference in their coverage. The rapes that have shamed India and the PM’s call to parents to be responsible for their sons’ actions seem to have touched a chord cutting across international borders.

Many among the foreign media were taken up by the access of banking facilities to all along with the Rs one lakh insurance that Modi promised in his speech yesterday. Terming it as a complex goal, the New York Times said that if successful, it “could allow the government to eventually convert subsidies for food, fuel and fertilizer into cash transfers”.

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“He came, he spoke, and he conquered India’s heart all over again,” said UK’s Daily Maila la Julius Ceasarand went on to highlight the 10 key takeaways of Modi’s speech. It mentioned how the Planning Commission was done away with, and the new focus was on manufacturing and skill development. The report also deconstructed everything that Modi wore from the headgear to his shoes.

Rape,the highlight

Though the headline screamed toilets for all and mentioned the PM’s talk about making manufacturing as one of the spotlights, the Washington Post article’s highlight was the issue of rape. Hailing Modi’s speech as ‘pathbreaking’, it said he had broken his silence on women’s safety, increasing reports on rape and crime against women by making it an issue in his I-Day speech. Modi scored highwith these issues that affect all, irrespective of color and creed.

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Rape reared its head in the headline of the Los Angeles Times: New Indian leader Modi raises issue of rape on Independence Day. It chose to describe Modi as the son of a tea vendor, and also could not resist making a mention of the 2002 riots. The article said that the PM had spoken about female infanticide, which for an I-Day speech was a surprise for many, in India and overseas. It went on to add what Modi said, “In 2019, ensuring cleanliness will be the most fitting tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary. "

Closer home, in Asia, The South China Morning Post also chose to focus on the rape, the anger over sexual violence in India, and mentioned some of the recent cases in memory regarding both. It did not fail to mention that sanitation, female infanticide, among other grave issues affecting women also figured in the I-Day speech.

The PM’s poignant remark, of asking parents to take responsibility for their sons actions was the focus in the newspapers in the UK. India shamed by rapes and sexual violence on women, said the UK’s Guardian. Putting the scrapping away of the Planning Commission in perspective, it said that this signalled a moving away from the erstwhile Soviet-style ‘command economy’.

DescribingModi, ’the son of a tea vendor’-a phrase that the foreign media can’t seem to have enough of, signalling a poverty of phrase to describe India’s Prime Minister, Australia’s The Herald spoke of the rapes that have shamed India which the PM spoke about. It saidModi gave a ‘withering assessment of the ruling establishment’.

Whither market reforms?

Our next door neighbour, Pakistan, chose instead to speak of what, according to the_ Dawn_newspaper, Modi had failed to achieve. It mentioned that there was ’little movement’ onhispre-poll promises of 100 new cities and economic growth job opportunities; while the _ Straits Times_mentioned thegovernment infighting Modi spoke about. It also said that the speech did not speak about any of the sweeping market reforms that “many who handed him India’s biggest election mandate in three decades have been waiting.”