The prime minister has been talking to us once every two days — 529 speeches in the 1095 days (three years) he has been in office. Was his 529th speech, delivered at the CII annual general meeting yesterday, something different? Did we hear a different Manmohan Singh? We did.

A keyword search for “inclusive growth” in the “PM’s speeches” section of the PM’s website (pmindia.nic.in) produces 302 results. So, the headline phrase the CII heard on Thursday is an old prime ministerial favourite, having found mention in over 57 per cent of Singh’s speeches. Search for “poor, SCs, STs, backward sections,” and you get 378 hits. Utterly unsurprisingly, nothing new in that either.

A search for “conspicuous consumption” produces 32 results. But most hits are accounted for by the word “consumption.” Narrow the field and search for “conspicuous.” Only two hits and in both speeches “conspicuous” is paired with “consumption.” One speech is, of course, Thursday’s. The other was delivered two years back, on May 20, 2005, at the Collectors’ Conference. “Be sensitive...be modest...lead simple lifestyles eschewing conspicuous consumption,” the PM told District Collectors, while, interestingly, complimenting them for “operating on the frontiers of knowledge.”

So to the best of all our knowledge, before this week’s CII speech Manmohan Singh used the loaded term “conspicuous consumption” only once and in a context that — no offence meant to District Collectors — wasn’t likely to grab national headlines.

That’s one firm indicator of a rhetorical break at the CII speech. As an economist, Singh knows exactly the political-economic significance of the term “conspicuous consumption.” An expression like “inclusive growth” does not necessarily offer value judgments on any class. It exhorts. But “conspicuous consumption” has censoriousness at its core. Singh, with the exception of that advice to Collectors, has never been censorious in this fashion before.

... contd.