In his last Independence Day address ahead of the next Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke at length about the progress India has made under his government and asserted that its rise is being hailed by the world. Modi drew a comparison between the situation in 2013 and how things stand today and said if the pace of the UPA government’s last year was maintained, it would have taken decades, centuries and generations to build as many toilets, distribute as many LPG connections among the poor and lay down as much optical fibre as his government has done. Prime Minister Modi ended his speech with this rousing poem.