Why Modi is better off without Indian media

I decided to remove my "political spectacles", intent on watching CNN-News 18's interview with the PM that revealed the softer, at-home casualness to a man better known for his toughness.

His stance on GST, of combining state and central elections, views on corruption, or his reserve in condemning the excesses of the fringe, are all too well-known.

It still held me captive for an hour, hoping to get a peek into "Modi the man", amidst his verdant surroundings at 7 RCR, between interludes to what seemed an address to the nation.

I had hoped to catch an emotive moment, like when he broke down talking to Mark Zuckerberg at the Town Hall Q&A in Silicon Valley, in context to his humble origins and his mother.

But he was in full control of what appeared a fixed match, not sounding remotely uncomfortable even when questioned about Lutyens' hostility to "outsiders" as he was deemed, within the hallowed circle.

Insiders

The point is Modi today firmly heads the privy league of Lutyens' insiders, having trashed its societal and lingual snobbery with his own desi stamp.

In every way, he has redefined the criteria of the "rights of admission reserved" within this elitist club and its impenetrable precincts.

He dresses smart like them, is a world-class traveller like them, and talks smarter, but seldom in Hindi, which probably doesn't find favour with the post-colonial gentry at Lutyens'.

Slothful senior bureaucrats were reigned in within the PM's first year in Delhi from leisurely lunches over "Bloody Mary's" at the Delhi Gymkhana or Golf Club, with their attendance tracked through a biometric system.

Now, babus don't like being preached the "19 commandments of conduct" that Modi instituted at the outset, resentful of this cultural cleansing.

Would one blame them or the banished power-fixers, for being averse to a PM who redefined the colonial code of conduct within Lutyens', something even his distinguished predecessor Vajpayee never tried to reform?

There was an evolutionary change in the Modi I met three years ago at Gandhinagar just before he took office as PM: a man who had acquired a more statesmanlike demeanour, utterly disdainful of the Lutyens' clique, with a knowing confidence he lords over them, yet uncaring to stoop for acceptance to its self-appointed "thekedaars" as he dismissively called them.

Without a reference to the "Delhi Durbar's" grande dame, he dispelled the elitism of the Nehru-Gandhi snobbery that debarred grass roots leaders like Sardar Patel, BR Ambedkar and Morarji Desai within its exclusivist turf, those imaginary boundaries of exclusion, drawn by Lutyenites over decades.

Interview

Three years ago, I had mildly suggested to the PM on why he never let-go occasionally his impenetrable, distant and to-the-point persona.

I asked why we couldn't get to see a more fallible, a more real leader, by getting a glimpse into his personal likes, loves and frailties?

Don't we all want to know the "soft" side of our leaders? He quipped back in a smiling, self-reflective tone: "Perhaps you may have a point... Jhansi ki raani, the warrior queen of liberation, must not have always have been stoically seated on horseback..."

The CNN interview held me captive as I wasn't watching my PM deliver over an election rally, or hear his monologue over radio in Mann ki Baat, or his impersonal tweets greeting an athlete or a world leader.

On his bittersweet relationship with the media, he told the soft-spoken-in-awe-anchor, a striking contrast to the perceived enfant gâté terrible of anchors, how TRPs are attained through debates and scoops in lieu of well-researched critique.

While every PM needs media on his side, Modi needs them much less than other leaders, what with a social media footprint at 22 million followers on Twitter and 34 million "likes" on Facebook, his reach is equivalent to having his own private media house, when he can conveniently "unfriend" print and TV channels at will.

Workaholic

I was taking in Modi's views on how being a workaholic he only felt tired if he was not working. How he lives in the "now", and wholly attentive to the person he engages with...

True attributes of a yogic practitioner, and the RSS pracharak-turned-PM, reminiscing on my own perceptions during my meeting with him in Gandhinagar.

How he is ever willing to change and is not stuck in an emotional time-warp, and how reading Vivekananda impacted him in his youth.

This was the epitome of high thinking and frugal living by the "outsider-insider" at 7 RCR.

But there was an unwitting act of impropriety by the owners of the channel in the "cut and paste" incorporation of the PM's Digital India campaign into the Reliance Jio advertisement.

Though well-intentioned, the advertorial faux pas revives the debate on sartorial excesses of the PM that gives his bête noire the upper hand in labelling him "Mr Reliance".

No one contends with the ingenuity and "disruptor status" of Jio in displacing competitors with its predatory pricing, which is a win-win for itself as also for the consumer, with its offer of free voice calls and the world's cheapest data plans.

But to build its USP around the PM gives the Opposition the chance to revive "the suit-boot ki sarkar" label and the government's capitalist leanings despite Modi's "no-favourites" policy, just when the crucial UP elections are round the corner.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

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