The problem with the whole ‘demo’ classroom photo shoot is not that it was all made up and transparently fake to the point of cringe, though dog knows it was as painful to see as nails on a chalkboard are to hear.
It is also not (as many, including myself, thought initially) that the PM of India, in the midst of a severe economic, social, political, environmental, and even existential crisis that this nation is going through, chose to waste his time on this.
It is that he knows this appeals to his core constituency of voters. That they are easily fooled, gullible people who believe anything he does or says. That even an obviously fake photoshoot is enough for them to believe he is deserving of his post and the right to lead this nation of 1.5 billion souls.
The Modi formula is simple: ‘जो दिखता है, वही बिकता है’, meaning ‘Only that sells which can be seen.’ But exactly WHAT to show is the key. And Modi is a master at knowing exactly what his voters want to see, even if it is seen as unfair, immoral, even illegal, by others who are not yet blinded by charisma. He isn’t as much a superhero with superpowers as he is someone who has recognised exactly what the majority of the voting public really wants (and no, it is not jobs or peace or equality or justice or fraternity or hope or opportunity or whatever other complicated concepts idealists like to think people actually want), and is prepared to disregard everything to get it to them.
Why else do you think Bilkis Bano’s rapists and Ram Rahim Singh were released during election time? He is not ‘exposing himself and his evil personality’ to you, my dear liberal. He is signalling to his audience. And he knows exactly what they want.
To these voters, optics is everything. Propaganda is news. And Modi is a superhero capable of righting everything, if only he were to be given an even freer hand. And more time.
You see, Modi knows his voters better than they know themselves. That’s why he continues to fool all the people all the time.
The joke, my friends, is on us. Not Modi. While we will be excitedly pointing at discrepancies in his photos and so on, frothing at our mouths with righteous indignation, and bemoaning the waste of taxpayers’ money and the time of the highest elected representative of the world’s most populous democracy, he will be belching satisfactorily after lunching on imported mushrooms sitting in his brand new tax-payer funded house on the Central Vista, before hauling his precious VIP ass into a bulletproof BMW as he laughs his way to the treasury benches in his spanking new Parliament building wearing his million-Rupee fashion statements, where he’ll give speeches about how he connects to the common citizen, a skill he obviously seems to possess in heaps over and above his nearest opponents, who wonder year after year what makes the very people he despises, mistreats, abandons, steals from, lies to, even murders, and most importantly, regards like complete idiots, continue to vote him to power.
And he’ll be right.
