Republic Day speeches by presidents are often routine and dull. But President Pranab Mukherjee's remarks, closely read, are a punch in the solar plexus.
Reading his lines, and sometimes between the lines, it is clear that the quintessential insider, who has been in public life for over four decades, is warning against the spread of corruption, crony capitalism and cynicism affecting the very political elite that he has been part of.
While he referred to the achievements of the country in his speech to the nation on the eve of Republic Day, he also offered some tough love. In this context his principal message was to the political class is to "win back the confidence of the people" and called on them to "ensure that the fruits of economic growth do not become the monopoly of the privileged at the peak of a pyramid".
Couching his views in a rhetorical style, Mukherjee wondered whether "the powerful (have) lost their dharma in pursuit of greed" and called on the nation to urgently "reset its moral compass". Leading off from the recent gang rape incident, the President said it was important to ensure that the nation eschew cynicism since it was something which was "blind to morality."
Mukherjee's principal message was the need to understand the extent to which the nation was on the "cusp of generational change", with the youth of the country being in its vanguard. He said this class was beset with
The young were concerned whether the system of the country offered "due reward for merit" and whether corruption had "overtaken morality in public life". He called on the political class to channelise the youth towards "change with speed, dignity and order."
He said the national reset was needed because the young could not "dream on an empty stomach" and needed jobs that were meaningful from their own point of view as well as that of the country.
The main purpose of economic policy and wealth creation, he observed, was to fight hunger and deprivation "and marginal subsistence from the base of our expanding population".
The President linked his anguish over the brutal gang rape incident to the need for gender justice. He said the young woman who was raped and murdered was "a symbol of all that new India strives to be" and it was not just the loss of a life, but "we lost a dream".
He said it was important to go beyond the issue of law in the case; this was a question of the sanctity of women as accepted by our own culture, he said, adding: "When we brutalise a woman, we wound the soul of our civilisation."
Mukherjee also had some tough words for Pakistan. In the context of the recent incidents on the Line of Control, he said "sponsorship of terrorism through non-state actors is a matter of deep concern". He said India was willing to offer a hand of peace, "but this hand should not be taken for granted".
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