01 December 2012, 09:52 AM IST
Gujarat CM Narendra Modi has long known how to use his own variant of what economists call the 'multiplier effect' to enhance his image. During the 2007 assembly elections in the state, NaMo as he is popularly called by his admirers inspired the creation of the 'Modi mask', which his supporters sported in their thousands, thereby creating myriad spitting images – the CM's critics will find the term particularly apt – of the self-styled strongman of Gujarat who likes to compare himself with Vallabhbhai Patel.
Now Modi has gone hi-tech in projecting his image and in doing so has demonstrated that, with the help of state-of-the-art gadgetry, he can perform the physically impossible feat of being in four, or more, different places at the same time. The CM recently made use of 3D holographic technology to project life-size images of himself at four different rallies – in Ahmedabad, Baroda, Rajkot and Surat – at the same time.
With poll fever gripping the state, the Congress and the recently formed Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) have cried 'Foul' to the Election Commission, asking it to investigate the source of the guesstimated Rs 5 crore the holographic tamasha is deemed to have cost. The claimed price tag has been pooh-poohed by an unnamed BJP spokesman who is quoted as having said that the whole show had cost no more than Rs 80 lakh.
Quibbling about costs aside, and about where the funds came from to cover those costs, the holographic hoohah shows that Mode hasn't lost his innate knack of grabbing the publicity limelight, by hook or by crook. His detractors might well say that the gimmicky exercise underlines their charge that the CM is all image and no substance, and that his repeated claims about the development the state has achieved thanks to his 'Vibrant Gujarat' investment melas are belied by the reality on the ground, which is that most of the promised funds have yet to materialise.
Modi fans, however, will argue that by using innovative technology to multiply his electoral outreach, the CM has once again demonstrated his can-do, will-do credentials which, in the eyes of his supporters at least, have earned him the reputation of a miracle-worker.
In a democracy as diverse as ours, a successful politician must be one who can be many different things to many different people. And in that sense, for a politician the ability to be in many different places, saying many different things, to many different people is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Indeed, NaMo's example might inspire other politicians to project themselves as multi-purpose leaders through the use of holographic imagery during election campaigns.
Such NaMo-inspired holo-campaigns might be particularly apt in India where the electoral promises made by politicians inevitably turn out to be holo, which is the preferred pronunciation in Gujarat and elsewhere of the word 'hollow'.
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