Is Modi becoming synonymous with nation?
With Modi having kickstarted his second innings at the helm, it is time to understand how Modi as a brand has evolved over years. Like any good marketing professional, Modi knows that brickbats can be converted into major opportunities. In 2014, when an o
A melting pot of different cultures is how New York is best described. The diversity that is seen in every nook and corner of the city is also capable of throwing abundant surprises. Usually your identity as an Indian often carries clichés of being from an unknown exotic land for people of other nationalities. But perhaps for the first time, being an Indian meant being from “the land from where Modi is.” People who did not even know the geographic location of India knew Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, and a person who elicits divisive opinions across the world.
Could it be that people have become more politically aware or is there something more to the phenomenon that is Modi? Has Modi’s sheer marketing brilliance made him greater than the country itself? The 2019 electoral mandate gave a peek into the psyche of the man who seems to know the pulse of the nation. Even when the most optimistic predictions indicated a tough battle and a coalition government, the Bhartiya Janata Party and its leader had the last laugh.
With Modi having kickstarted his second innings at the helm, it is time to understand how Modi as a brand has evolved over years. Like any good marketing professional, Modi knows that brickbats can be converted into major opportunities. In 2014, when an opposition figure ridiculed him for being a tea seller nurturing aspirations of leading the world’s largest democracy, he saw an opportunity to sell a dream. Through the power of social media, that had never been used effectively till that point in election campaigning, Modi was able to tell the people that no dream is too big and no goal unachievable in a country like India. His ‘chai pe charcha’ (chats over tea) campaign captured the imagination of a young India that, for the first time, felt part of the country’s political process.
Recently, when most Indians were busy making memes of Modi’s social media updates of meditating in a cave in Kedarnath, there was an important aspect that everybody missed. Modi was the first head of government to directly reach people’s homes and lives through his social media handles. When the media cried foul over Modi not holding press conferences or taking questions from the media, the reason why the public never raised a fuss was because they were seeing their prime minister, daily. Through the effective management of his social media pages and also using the official broadcast media through his ‘Mann ki baat’, (talking from the heart) he ensured that he stayed connected to the people who voted for him and others who were curious about him.
Added to this is his great oratorical skill and his ability to sell nationalism at a time when India as a nation has forgotten how to stay together. Whether taking credit for military action or the achievements of space scientists, Modi always has the innate ability to touch people’s hearts and minds. It is this understanding of the public sentiment that did not see any questions being raised by people over something as sensitive as surgical strikes and whether they were indeed in the nation’s long-term interests.
Modi’s other achievement has been to make the Indian diaspora worldwide feel proud of their roots.
Routinely interacting with them, Modi has helped sell the idea of India to not just Indians abroad but also to the people of countries he visited. Whether in Madison Square Garden in 2014, the informal Wuhan summit of 2018 or his recent visits to Maldives and Sri Lanka, Modi has stayed away from conventional modes of diplomacy and given an impression of a leader who will leave behind a lasting legacy.
What he has essentially brought back by selling his idea of India is the pride that Indians had when they spoke of their country.
It remains to be seen how Modi will conduct himself in the second term and on what areas he will concentrate. One thing is certain; that his social media frenzy will continue, giving Indian media enough light-hearted or despairing moments, depending on which side of the ideological divide one is.
The challenge will be to ensure that India doesn’t become synonymous with Modi and the nation’s glory and history are portrayed accurately, in the right perspective.