Teachers' Day: To Modi sir, with love

Last year when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that he was going to do an interactive session with kids on Teachers' Day alarm bells were raised about his real intent. There were heated, screeching debates in TV studios, as always. So much so one would have thought it was a dangerous idea to get children to attend school for one more day. For weeks there were loud protestations about how schools were being forced to give up a holiday. The cruelty, apparently, was being compounded by the fact that schools were going to be video linked with the prime minister. What could be more outrageous!

Now, the really shocking part is that the same event has taken place and gone by without anyone creating a big fuss about it. It seems usually vociferous TV channels completely missed the day in their calendar. So what has changed in this past one year ? Basically, perhaps Mr Modi reaching out on Teachers' Day has already become so routine that it is no longer threatening us or our children? Or that TV channels have found something even more trivial to discuss?

The ultimate victory for a good idea is when others begin to copy it. And so now we have the Aam Aadmi Party running away with the concept. Only - they brought in the president to deliver a lecture, as deep rivalry would have prevented them asking the prime minister to say the proverbial "do shabd".

One can thus wonder what the fuss was all about one year ago. Perhaps it was a concerted effort, obviously, by anti-Modi parties, to create a panic about how dictatorial things had become! Children were being forced to wake up early and meet the country's prime minister! How terrible!

But now that Narendra Modi spoke for a second year running perhaps this innovation will get noted in our calendar. Just like Yoga Day perhaps.

The real question, therefore, is whether we are resistant to change or, on the other hand, whether all changes can be resisted ? Or has the time come for all of us to become creatures of routine because it is safer. We are far more secure because we certainly do not want even a slight disruption of our lives.

And yet without change no one can evolve. Perhaps that's what the prime minister was trying to do when he decided to interact with students.

And this year he took the corollary still further, because he even attended an RSS function on the same day. Undoubtedly much will be made of it, and oblique references will be made about his childhood.

However, that link could be true, as one always feels that when the prime minister participates in a school function, he is also harking back to his own past when he had very little. He might not have even had a stable school life, and perhaps that is why, one can see his untiring efforts to reach out to school kids.

Nothing wrong with it, except when his intentions are always being questioned. Or, have we, finally as this Teachers' Day shows, got used to Mr Modi?