Mann Ki Baat at 139: Modi calls the show a pilgrimage, hails a revived Himalayan river and Northeast millet growers

Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the 139th edition of his monthly radio address on Sunday to call Mann Ki Baat “no less than a pilgrimage”, a programme that he said lets him understand people’s efforts and honour them. It began on Vijayadashami 12 years ago, he recalled, and “since then, our journey has continued uninterrupted.”

The broadcast ran through the usual mix of health, science, farming and local enterprise, and ended with a call to mark Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s birth anniversary on 31 October.

Health and science

Modi said the government’s e-Sanjeevani telemedicine service had reached people across the country. “It gives me great satisfaction to see that, through this, about 50 crore tele-consultations have been conducted so far,” he said. He added that about 1.9 lakh Ayushman Arogya Mandirs now provide primary care at the panchayat level and are turning into local wellness centres.

He spoke at length about the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre at IIT Madras, which is building a brain imaging platform that produces high-resolution 3D images with the help of the Param Shakti supercomputer. “Their aim is to do 3D mapping of 100 human brains and study them in detail in the coming days,” he said, crediting industry, government and the institute’s alumni.

A river and a field

In Uttarakhand’s Tehri Garhwal district, Modi said, the Heval river had been shrinking and springs nearby were drying up. The district administration and villagers responded with rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge and tree planting on a large scale. The river has been revived, he said, and dozens of natural water sources restored.

He praised the Nav-Trinjan initiative of the Kheti Virasat Mission in Punjab’s Malwa region, which grows organic and naturally coloured cotton without chemicals and runs a weaving school that the Prime Minister said had changed the lives of many women.

Millets took him to the Northeast. In Khanduli village in Meghalaya’s West Jaintia Hills, two women, Darapbiang Mulieh and Daieidlangki Suchiang, make cookies, cakes, muffins and baby food from finger millet bought from local farmers. “They focused on creating new products from millets,” Modi said. He also named Chekjing Sangma, a farmer in Sadolpara in West Garo Hills, and Kezoma village in Nagaland’s Kohima district, where millet farming had stopped for more than a decade before the community took it up again in 2024.

Local goods and 31 October

Ahead of Diwali and Chhath, Modi asked listeners to buy local products. “This spirit of ‘Vocal for Local’ is taking our products to markets around the world,” he said, citing makhana from Purnia in Bihar reaching Greece and pulses from Kalaburagi in Karnataka reaching the Maldives.

He paid tribute to the family of Shivani of Narmadapuram in Madhya Pradesh, who donated her organs after she died in a road accident, and to the Punjab-born physicist Narinder Singh Kapany, known as the father of fibre optics, whose birth centenary falls on 31 October.

The same day is Rashtriya Ekta Diwas. “The Run for Unity is an opportunity to strengthen our unity and renew our commitment to the nation,” Modi said. Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and several BJP leaders listened to the broadcast at public gatherings.