By Mujib Mashal

NEW DELHI — Once a month, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, walks into a studio set up at his government bungalow and takes his seat behind a microphone. The air conditioning is switched off to quiet its hum. Thick curtains maintain the room’s silence even from Modi’s favorite peacocks in the garden outside.

Then the prime minister begins his radio show, for which he has recorded more than 100 episodes, with a usual greeting in Hindi: “My dear countrymen, hello!”

What follows — about 30 minutes of Modi playing on-air host to the world’s most populous nation — is one way he has made himself intimately omnipresent across India’s vastness, exerting a hold on the national imagination that seems impervious to criticism of his government’s erosion of India’s democratic norms.

On the program, Modi is both favorite teacher and empathetic friend, speaking directly to his listeners and selected callers. He offers advice on managing the stress of school exams, even as he reminds his audience that his educational background is as humble as theirs. He champions water conservation while expressing an awareness of the challenges of village and farm life.

His presence on the airwaves may seem anachronistic, more suited to the era of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats, but it is crucial to understanding his overwhelming grip on India’s information landscape. At its core is a transformation of Modi’s image that will be on full display this week as President Joe Biden hosts him for a state visit, part of a red-carpet effort to court India as a rising economic power and counterweight to China.

The radio shows, sliced into short clips and blasted through his party’s immense social media apparatus, accompanied by text and video, shape a persona wholly disconnected from the stoking of religious divides and the silence on sectarian violence that have marked his years in power. It is a softer Modi, served up for mass consumption, that counters his more partisan rhetoric in rallies and speeches.

This image, nurtured persistently, has made Modi immensely popular at home and helped rehabilitate him abroad after he temporarily became an international pariah two decades ago, accused of human rights violations over deadly communal riots and barred from entering the United States.

Off the radio airwaves, Modi has many avatars: yoga teacher, poet, tech champion, wildlife photographer, even holy man clad in colorful robes and headwear — what his party’s president recently called “the king of deities.”

But his role as on-air talker combines two of his greatest strengths. The first is his deep understanding of India’s grassroots, developed over decades as a foot soldier and evangelist of the Hindu right. The other is his populist mastery of storytelling for a digital media sphere where he can effectively communicate his government’s popular programs, from free rations to improved infrastructure, and make virtually any message go viral.

“On top of the system is Modi, whose communication is very carefully thought out, almost always positive, and always framed to present the indistinguishability of Modi from India,” said Joyojeet Pal, who studies political use of social media at the University of Michigan.

‘I Am There With You’

Each broadcast of “Mann Ki Baat,” which loosely translates as Conversations From the Heart, is scripted for a nation on the ascent, connecting the local with the national and the global. All the while, the program associates Modi with every positive happening, big or small, and every solution, tangible or spiritual.

On occasion, he talks about international events where India commands the spotlight, but he most often addresses issues of basic government services, including the delivery of some of life’s most rudimentary amenities, like piped water or toilets. From his more partisan pulpits, he blames India’s previous elite for denying the masses these necessities.

Water scarcity is a frequent subject. “As a responsible citizen and as a member of society, we will have to cultivate the habit of conserving every drop of water,” Modi said in one episode, before giving the example of a coastal village that has a “200-year-old underground water tank,” recharged with rainfall.

Another regular topic is pressures on young people, including exam stress in a country — this part is left unsaid — where students find too few job opportunities after graduating from a competitive education system.

“I cannot guide you on the tricks to obtain better marks because I consider myself an average student on such issues. I have myself never scored well in any exams in my life,” he said on the program. “But friends, I am there with you in your moment of crisis.”

A participatory sense is built into the show, whose agenda is set by his communications team and whose technical work is done by the state broadcaster. At the beginning of every month, the prime minister puts out a call on social media, where he has a cumulative 300 million followers across various platforms, for suggestions of topics for the next show. Listeners post ideas in response.

From a shortlist prepared by his staff, Modi selects a couple of themes for the next show, according to officials involved in the process. And the work begins — of choosing the people he will speak with on the program, and then sending crews to film them for broadcast on YouTube and television.

During the pandemic, Modi used one episode to encourage citizens to get vaccinated.

“Come, let us visit a village and speak to people about the vaccine,” he told his listeners.

By phone, he asked two villagers, in a nonjudgmental tone, what was holding people back from taking the vaccine. Both told him messages were being forwarded on WhatsApp about side effects and dangers.

Modi responded by telling them about other villages where 100% of the adult population was vaccinated. “Rajesh-ji,” Modi told one of the villagers, “the only way to address this fallacy is convincing others by getting yourself vaccinated. You will do that, won’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Rajesh said.

“Will you do it for sure?” Modi asked.

“Sir, yes, sir,” Rajesh said. “Talking to you made me feel that I should get myself vaccinated and mobilize others.”

With that, a leader who months earlier had been accused of inaction as bodies filled India’s crematories had rewritten the narrative into one of small victories at the local level that are a model for the world. – New York Times