NEW DELHI: Narendra Modi is known for his public speaking, extempore and at length. But do you know how many speeches he has delivered since taking charge as Prime Minister ? The answer – a staggering 775.ET did the math using publicly available resources on Modi’s personal website and the Press Information Bureau (PIB) website, and spoke to senior Union ministers and officials who have worked closely with him, to get a better understanding of the PM’s love for public oratory. But first, the maths.Modi has made nearly 19 speeches every month since he became PM on May 26, 2014. This translates to about two public speeches every three days. Most of his speeches studied by ET lasted for more than 30 minutes.“He has god-gifted talent of oratory, communication and intelligence to be able to speak on any issue from his heart,” said the minister of state for Prime Minister’s Office, Jitendra Singh Using the archive website of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh , ET found that Singh made a total of 1,401 speeches in 10 years of UPA-1 and UPA-2. That translates to about 11 speeches per month.Modi, in contrast, has already spoken more times than Singh did in either of his five-year terms in UPA-1or UPA-2. ET could not find any record of any political or election speeches made by Singh as PM. The Congress did not appear to be impressed by Modi’s speech rate, though.“The problem with Prime Minister Modi is that he lives by the dictum ‘my talks are my governance’. No wonder, as PM Modi is exhausting his entire focus on his verbosity instead of focusing on governance; the country is going to the dogs,” said Congress spokesman Manish Tewari. Union minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi couldn’t disagree more, of course.“Manmohan Singh was a reader, Modi is a leader,” Naqvi said, pointing out that Singh invariably read out from a prepared text while Modi speaks extempore. “PM Modi has social, political and administrative experience. His grip over the ground realities and issues of common people is unmatchable. His speeches are never repetitive,” he said.An analysis of his speeches shows Modi spoke the most in 2015 – about 264 speeches in all. This was a year of extensive foreign visits by the PM, who used every single opportunity to reach out to the Indian diaspora and to foreign audiences on international platforms. Modi as PM has given at least 166 speeches abroad – or nearly one in four.“PM Modi likes to get his message out, loud and clear. He does not mind speaking even twice or thrice a day at times if he feels it is required,” said a senior government functionary, speaking on condition of anonymity.There have been at least four months when Modi spoke for 30 or more times, mainly because he travelled abroad during those months. In November 2015, for instance, Modi delivered 36 speeches in all, including four speeches during Bihar polls. Then he travelled to the UK, G20 in Turkey, for Asean-India Summit in Malaysia, to Singapore, to Paris for the Climate Change Summit and also to Kashmir.His 32 speeches during April 2015 came amid a visit to Paris, Germany and Canada, and he made 31 speeches in September 2014 when he had made his first visit as PM to the United States as well as Japan.PMO minister Jitendra Singh said Modi is the biggest draw for the party during polls as people wish to listen to him. “For the first time, we have a PM who spontaneously identifies with the common man in every part and region of the country. This is rare phenomenon for a heterogeneous society like India as aspirations of, say, Jammu & Kashmir would be entirely different from Tamil Nadu, and those of Manipur may be different from Gujarat,” he said.Singh said Modi is able to strike a chord with the people because he knows grass-roots democracy so well. “Modi era will be known as the beginning of the grass-roots democracy of India without any inferences of family or dynasty lineage. People are ready to trust what he says,” he said.“His demonetisation speech – there may have been hardship involved in the transition phase but people were ready to cooperate because they thought if Modi is saying so, it is for the benefit of the country.”