Though a controversial figure, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been described by an Indian opposition leader Shashi Tharoor as "one of the greatest speakers of Hindi in Indian history".
Modi's oratorical skills were in evidence during a speech to the Indian diaspora at Warsaw's Sheraton Wednesday night.
The crowd was already jubilant before his arrival and as soon as he appeared, there were spontaneous call and response chants, such as "If Modi says it, it will happen". Definitely a favourable crowd.
For a similar combination of mass enthusiasm and high-values public speaking, you would have to look to Barack Obama's speeches to the US Democratic Convention or evangelists like Billy Graham.
Modi knows how to work a crowd, but unlike most popular speakers, today's Donald Trump for example, there was no negativity in his speech at all. No enemies were mentioned, no rival parties, no overt criticisms. If there were criticisms they were very subtle references, for example in one of his slogans "Humanity First", presumably a reference to Trump's "America First".
Modi referred to the war in Ukraine but diplomatically, saying that India, as the "home of Buddha", can only want peace.
In contrast to Obama, however, Modi did not only speak about high ideals, but also mentioned a lot of dates and figures. By 2045 India will be a "developed country" for example.
He emphasized several times the scale of the challenges and successes of India and was surely referring to media criticisms that democratic standards have fallen under his premiership (for example, this article, beginning "India exemplifies the global democratic recession".) Modi stressed the scale of India's elections, how many more voters there are in India than Europe, as if to say: "Running a tiny European democracy is a small managerial job compared to mine."
Modi likes to use the military sounding "Operation" - "Operation Gangha" was the name for the evacuation of Indian students from war-torn Ukraine and "Operation Metro" is the construction of huge distances of underground services.
Modi has been perceived as a right-wing, business-friendly, free-market supporter, especially regarding his time as Chief Minister of Gujurat (2001-2014). However, like Jeffrey Sachs, one of the architects of Poland's economic reforms, he seems to have moved to the centre in economic policy, emphasizing the role of infrastructure - and therefore implicitly the government - several times during his speech.
The political-economic approach appeared to be: modernise India with technology, roads, underground networks, space programs, AI - and then business can take care of itself. Jeffrey Sachs (also once a hard-core libertarian) has described the role of the state in removing poverty as providing the first "rungs of a ladder" - once people have basic health care and basic infrastructure, the free market can kick in and develop. But the state is essential at these early stages, according to Sachs.
Modi could not be faulted for the speech neither in terms of what he said or how he said it. Whether he and his party's actions are consistent with those words and ideals is another matter entirely.
Additional sources: Journal of Democracy, Blue Planet Prize
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