It was Narendra Modi’s first public interaction in the national capital after his third election victory which has pitch-forked him to the top of the 2014 race. And he didn’t disappoint – neither the 2,000-plus students of the Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) nor the millions who listened to him through live telecasts.

Modi the performer-orator was in full flow, explaining the much-talked-about Gujarat model of growth, peppering his talk with amusing anecdotes, paying tributes to a range of his heroes from Shyamji Krishna Verma to Swami Vivekanand and coining Twitter-friendly slogans and acronyms. Students and other invitees kept clapping him during his 65-minute oration.

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Students motivated by Modi's motivational speech

Without making his speech political, Modi on Wednesday hit the Congress where it hurts most, addressing two of the ruling party’s core constituents: the farmers, and the youth.

Using his speech at the Delhi college, he tried to spread the message beyond Gujarat’s industrialisation, saying it has also become a major agri-production state, as well as a global technological superpower that is a handiwork of the youth.

An aggressive lilt in his speech and yet not overtly aggressive, power-packed content meant to show the future to the country’s youth, Modi’s body language was that of a leader who is certain of what he is saying. There was little mumbling, no dithering, no attempt to look at any paper — unlike the top Congress leadership — and just the right pauses to let the effect of his speech drill in.

Taking on the mantle for farmers, Modi said, “Gujarat has never been an agricultural state. In fact, there we have a proverb: registan (desert) this side and Pakistan on the other side. But Gujarat has now attained 10-percent agricultural growth (not an easy task).”

He also his government has started the Krishi Mahotsav, or agriculture fair, every year. In May or June, when the mercury soars as high as mid-forties in the state, Gujarat officers go to villages to help the farmers, teaching them the latest techniques and demonstrating before them the knowhow, he said.

He also said much of what is consumed elsewhere in the country, as well as in other countries, are grown in Gujarat — milk, onion, groundnut, among others.

Working the crowds in his own fashion, he told the crowd halfway through his speech that he would miss the 45-minute time given to him. A few minutes later, he asked again: “Do you want to hear more?”

Given an affirmative “yes” amid loud cheers and clapping, he took to his favourite subject: industrialization and youth. Political parties, he said, look at the youth these days as “new-age voters”. “But I want to look at them as the new-age power,” he said.

On Swami Vivekananda’s 150th birth anniversary, India should look to march forward with the country’s youth by its side. “We are lucky that we have the world’s biggest population of youth at this juncture; in this century,” Modi said.

The country’s youth, he said, has changed India’s image from being a land of snake charmers to one of a IT superpower — and all this merely in a span of 20-25 years.

Giving an anecdote, Modi said he had gone to Taiwan not long ago — immediately clarifying that it was “some 15 years ago, when I was not the chief minister” — when the local interpreter asked him politely whether India is still the land of snake charmers. “I said no; we have had some devaluation. We are now mouse-charmers,” Modi said, referring to the IT revolution the country has undergone over the years.

Whatever India has achieved in the last few years has been the handiwork of the youth, “not the work of any political leader”, he asserted.

Giving full indication that he was talking as a pan-India leader, he stressed the words “mine” time and again. “I am proud to say my country is young. Sixty-five percent of my country comprises youth power,” he said, adding, “poora Europe boodha ho chukka hai (the whole of Europe has an ageing population).”