Modi, media, marketing and money – perhaps in the reverse order – created the Modi wave. Money and marketing cannot create a Modi; nor can Modi without money and marketing create a wave, going by the hard realities of life. In his epoch-making book, Marshall McLuhan said, Medium is the Message – which is also the title of the book. But for the Indian media, Modi is the message.
Modi’s tea-seller image, more than the lotus symbol, has caught on the imagination of Indians, like Abraham Lincoln’s celebrated log cabin – the symbol of a poor man’s house. Voters have creativity, voters have taste, and voters have good judgment. Indian voters in their wisdom decided to give Modi a chance to cleanse the system that produced only scams and gang rapes.
What a poor auto-rickshaw driver told this writer months ago still rings in his ears, “A new man will always do something good for the country. We should give him a chance. Others are thieves.†You don’t need any more analysis for the well-deserved decimation of Congress. This poor man’s perception of their netas as thieves is shared by most Indians: How else could the party in power fare so poorly – a history’s low?
But a word of caution: Atal Behari Vajpayee, the idol of BJP, lost the election to Sonia Gandhi – against the much advertised India shining campaign, which ended as Sonia shining! Winning and losing are part of the game of democracy; and if Modi maintains his composure, he could be a two-time, or even a three-time prime minister. But if he allows a free hand to the lunatic fringe, he could end up as a one-time prime minister, like his predecessor! Perhaps the fear is misplaced, going by the governance record of Modi himself.
All is well that ends well. The Modi wave is created by Modi himself – by the sheer power of his communication! Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, John F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, and Barack Obama have used their oratorical skill to scale the peak. And now history beckons Modi!    Â
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