New Delhi: In a speech delivered six days after votes were counted in the assembly elections in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday (May 10), while addressing a gathering in Secunderabad that it was a “time of crisis” in India and a moment to “take some pledges, keeping in mind our duties above all else”.

Modi urged citizens to reduce consumption, particularly of fossil fuels, avoid discretionary imports and adopt more “self-reliant” habits – primarily emphasising the need to conserve foreign exchange reserves. He said these pledges should be fulfilled “with complete submission”.

“You are witnessing the challenges across the world. The crisis in West Asia is continuing, and the impact of the war is being felt globally. Bharat is also affected by this situation,” PM Modi said, DD News reports.

India’s foreign exchange reserves are well below their 2021 peak levels at present, at around USD 690 billion, and have suffered two major falls this financial year, of around USD 10 billion and a further slide by around USD 7.7 billion.

Against this backdrop, the prime minister laid out “pledges” for ordinary citizens that involve changing their lifestyles for one year to “help the nation”. Much of his speech framed economic adjustment as a matter of individual behavioural change, calling on households, workers and consumers to reduce spending (including on cooking medium) and discretionary imports – and for farmers to drastically cut down on fertiliser use.

The Prime Minister’s ideas have drawn sharp criticism, with the Congress party saying he was “cluless” even after three months of the war in West Asia about how to ensure energy security.

3 months into the Iran-US war and PM Modi is still clueless about ensuring India’s energy security. It is shameless, reckless and downright immoral that the PM is pushing the common citizen into inconvenience, instead of building contingencies to ensure our economy is unaffected… https://t.co/LoTPH0huE0 — K C Venugopal (@kcvenugopalmp) May 10, 2026

3 months into the Iran-US war and PM Modi is still clueless about ensuring India’s energy security.

It is shameless, reckless and downright immoral that the PM is pushing the common citizen into inconvenience, instead of building contingencies to ensure our economy is unaffected… https://t.co/LoTPH0huE0

— K C Venugopal (@kcvenugopalmp) May 10, 2026

Below are the PM’s ideas, proposed in his speech:

Use less petrol and diesel

One big “sankalp” or pledge........

© The Wire