Teacher’s Day morphed into Children’s Day as Narendra Modi’s speech to the nation's school students did not involve much felicitating of teachers but was dominated by the prime minister fielding questions from children across the country.
Through the two-hour-long event, prefaced by ten minutes of remarks by Modi, the prime minister spoke candidly about himself. He admitted that he did not know himself very well, that he was a taskmaster who would make others work just as much as he did, and that he never once ran for the position of class monitor.
His initial speech touched the usual points one would expect at a Teacher’s Day function, including the importance of teachers and why the country needs to encourage children to become teachers. But after he sat down and began to answer questions, the speech turned away from teachers to the subject of students and their development.
As schools across India scrambled to make last-minute arrangements for televisions and internet connections to stream the prime minister’s speech, certain schools from across the country were assured of a direct connection with Delhi because they were a part of the live telecast.
Seven schools from Bhuj in Gujarat to Tinsukia in Assam, Leh in Jammu and Kashmir to Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar actively participated in the question session. Selected students were permitted to ask Modi prepared questions ranging from what sort of pranks he got up to as a child to how they could become prime minister.
Twitter, as always, was polarised between adoring Modi fans and scathing critics, tempered on both sides by touches of humour.
Modi has consistently embraced technology, making this speech unusual only for the audience. During his prime ministerial campaign, he spent crores of rupees organising live 3D screenings of his speeches across the country. But in today’s speech, Modi encountered a universal problem: a microphone that crackled so much he was obliged to refer to it in the middle of an answer.
Before the speech began, people pointed out the problems with holding children across the country as captive audiences.
Certain Twitter users criticised Modi for speaking in Hindi to an audience not necessarily familiar with the language. He did not correct a student from Imphal, but when a girl from Thiruvananthapuram asked him in English whether as a teacher he would pay more attention to an intelligent but lazy student or a hardworking but dull one, he made it a point to translate her question into Hindi and also replied in that language. (Teachers must always treat all students equally, was his reply.)
As usual, Modi had a media joke ready. When a student asked him how schools in Japan were different from ones in India, he said that he would first have to refer the question to "mediawaalon". Students in Japan, he elaborated, were willing to maintain their schools, but when he was in Gujarat and a similar situation happened, there was a media uproar that students were being made to sweep their schools. This neatly elided the fact that at least one furore in 2008 related to the fact that Dalit students were made to clean toilets.
Modi also indulged in the age-old admonition to children to be more involved in their household duties and enquire about the effort their parents put into raising them.
Although the programme began on time, it extended half an hour beyond the schedule, as Modi continued to field questions from children. Instead of making his way directly off the stage, he instead chose to exit through the audience, smiling and shaking hands with children as he went along.
This floored certain Twitter users.
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Through the two-hour-long event, prefaced by ten minutes of remarks by Modi, the prime minister spoke candidly about himself. He admitted that he did not know himself very well, that he was a taskmaster who would make others work just as much as he did, and that he never once ran for the position of class monitor.
His initial speech touched the usual points one would expect at a Teacher’s Day function, including the importance of teachers and why the country needs to encourage children to become teachers. But after he sat down and began to answer questions, the speech turned away from teachers to the subject of students and their development.
As schools across India scrambled to make last-minute arrangements for televisions and internet connections to stream the prime minister’s speech, certain schools from across the country were assured of a direct connection with Delhi because they were a part of the live telecast.
Seven schools from Bhuj in Gujarat to Tinsukia in Assam, Leh in Jammu and Kashmir to Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar actively participated in the question session. Selected students were permitted to ask Modi prepared questions ranging from what sort of pranks he got up to as a child to how they could become prime minister.
Twitter, as always, was polarised between adoring Modi fans and scathing critics, tempered on both sides by touches of humour.
Modi has consistently embraced technology, making this speech unusual only for the audience. During his prime ministerial campaign, he spent crores of rupees organising live 3D screenings of his speeches across the country. But in today’s speech, Modi encountered a universal problem: a microphone that crackled so much he was obliged to refer to it in the middle of an answer.
Before the speech began, people pointed out the problems with holding children across the country as captive audiences.
Certain Twitter users criticised Modi for speaking in Hindi to an audience not necessarily familiar with the language. He did not correct a student from Imphal, but when a girl from Thiruvananthapuram asked him in English whether as a teacher he would pay more attention to an intelligent but lazy student or a hardworking but dull one, he made it a point to translate her question into Hindi and also replied in that language. (Teachers must always treat all students equally, was his reply.)
As usual, Modi had a media joke ready. When a student asked him how schools in Japan were different from ones in India, he said that he would first have to refer the question to "mediawaalon". Students in Japan, he elaborated, were willing to maintain their schools, but when he was in Gujarat and a similar situation happened, there was a media uproar that students were being made to sweep their schools. This neatly elided the fact that at least one furore in 2008 related to the fact that Dalit students were made to clean toilets.
Modi also indulged in the age-old admonition to children to be more involved in their household duties and enquire about the effort their parents put into raising them.
Although the programme began on time, it extended half an hour beyond the schedule, as Modi continued to field questions from children. Instead of making his way directly off the stage, he instead chose to exit through the audience, smiling and shaking hands with children as he went along.
This floored certain Twitter users.
And in a speech that entailed several departures from protocol, one user pointed out a rather glaring one.
