'EXPECTATIONS OF D-DAY SPEECH?' - WHERE ARE WE HEADED?

By Ruma Dubey

As a human, we constantly need goal posts to urge us ahead. Without an aim, most of us humans wither away and a sense of pessimism sets in. Like we save money for the future of our children, a trip abroad, work to make the company a Rs.100 crore turnover one; we constantly consciously or subconsciously set our sights on a goal. Be it a pursuit in the material world or the spiritual world.

The behavior of the stock market is basically a reflection of collective human behavior and even there, what eggs us on to trade/invest, irrespective or losses suffered are the various milestones – which we call expectations. The triggers – earnings, inflation, IIP, GDP numbers, election outcome, Budget and so on.

But when we come across lesser and lesser reasons to celebrate, we tend to get more ‘micro’. looking for triggers even in the most routine things. Like the current build up on expectations from Modi’s Independence Day speech. Have we ever truly bothered to find any trigger or motivation from a PMs Independence Day speech?

It’s been a long time since something like this ever happened. And we are not talking about the common man on the street but punters on Dalal Street. And expectations are running high as the market is expecting some major bag of goodies.  Here is a list of ‘what to expect’ from reams of articles and scores of websites.

• Making India into a R&D powerhouse for biotech and pharma
• Moves to make India into an automobile manufacturing hub
• Focus on youth
• Long term plans for growth
• Setting up skills development center
• Clean-up of Ganga is sure to figure out in the speech
• Some grand financial inclusion plan
• Road and highways plan
• More power projects

These ‘expectations’ are a collection from all across the media and if we look at it independently, it might actually seem like a Budget expectation. What are really talking about here? It’s the day for national patriotism or ‘market friendly’ announcements? Are we today so hard pressed for good news that we build such high and illogical expectations, which are sure to fail?

The media is building up this frenzy of expectations, making it almost into a Budget kind of thing. But lets get realistic and not get ahead of this. This will be Modi’s first Independence Day and it will be more about India and where he wants to see India in the next few years. It will all be rhetorics, where doing social good, uplifting the poor and providing education will be a priority. The speech will be similar to his earlier speeches as he has already voiced his priorities. To expect some major sop in an Independence Day speech would be really too myopic. Yes, we will have his trademark quotes and quips. There is no doubt that he is a great orator, so in that sense, it would be inspiring. But will his speech get our tomato prices down or bring down interest rates or spur growth? Nah, that will not happen. This is not the platform to do that, it’s as simple as that…

One thing is for sure though – it would be a great speech after a really long time.