It was a whiff of a fresh Modi air literally flowing “freely” across 9 Ashoka Road with the Prime Minister using the Diwali Milan occasion to break barriers of his high office to reach out to the nearly 400 journalists, shaking hands, chatting up and smiling for selfies — for which there was a mad scramble among the media fraternity. A smiling and relaxed Modi, with Haryana and Maharashtra electoral ‘Diwali gifts’ under his belt, recognised some old faces, opened up with the new entrants and visibly “enjoyed” the ‘schoolkid’ enthusiasm of scribes for half-an-hour as he suddenly dropped all formalities to be with them sans his heavy security cordon.
The Diwali Milan was organised by the BJP media cell at the bungalow adjacent to its headquarters, 11 Ashoka Road, where the huge contingent of print and electronic media journalists, particularly those on the BJP beat, got an opportunity to have the first ‘official’ informal interaction with Narendra Modi after his assuming the prime ministership on May 26, this year.
The scenes at the venue were not without an ironic twist, reminiscent of a racy Bollywood plot, with the protagonist revealing his struggling past to the audience after reaching the apogee of success in his tumultuous career. The Prime Minister had worked in a humble way as a BJP worker in the same ground where he was being felicitated by his party and greeted by the media.
Modi, who used to stay at the party headquarters as a party office bearer before becoming CM of Gujarat, said in a brief address laced with humour: “I used to arrange chairs here waiting for you. Those were different days when we used to interact freely. I had a beautiful relationship with you and it helped me in Gujarat.” “Kuch varsh pehle mera aapse gehra naata rehta tha… main kursiyan lagata tha… woh din bhi kuch aur thay, khulke baatein karte thay,” he said in an apparent nostalgic peek in his past ties with the scribes.
Bridging the seeming gap inadvertently crept between him and the media since he took charge of the country, the Prime Minister said he was looking for ways to expand his relationship with it. “Some way will be found. It is important to interact with media directly rather than reportage and articles. By interacting directly, one gets to know things which mediapersons cannot report. Not only does one get information but also vision, which is very valuable,” he said.
Modi, a big proponent of the social media, has been tweeting frequently to communicate his views and ideas and taking feedback before and after becoming the Prime Minister.
While Modi waded through the crowd of scribes, many clicked one or two quick selfies of themselves with the Prime Minister. All this while, the Prime Minister patiently offered his autographs to “more of his die-hard fans”.
He took the opportunity to take media along on his drive on the Swachchh Bharat Abhiyan appreciating its role in highlighting the Government’s cleanliness drive. “Aapne kalam ko jhadu mein convert kar diya hai, PM ke jhadu haath mein lene se kaam nahin chalega... aap roshni phailaiye,” he said.
Modi said “media is inspiring citizens to work and take initiative”. More than healthcare, preventive care was more important, he said, and cleanliness drive was a national duty with “no one untouchable in this movement”. He said the mindset that all work should be done by the Government was changing with the theme that the people together with the Government would accomplish all the tasks.
All the top-rung Ministers of the Modi Cabinet and BJP, including party president Amit Shah, senior Ministers Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Dharmendra Pradhan and Prakash Javadekar, were in attendance.
‘Click-happy’ PM turns shutterbug
In a role reversal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday turned photographer. He took the BJP’s official photographer by surprise when the latter came close to him to take his photograph when the PM was wading through rows of scribes. Modi was then seen saying something to the photographer following which he handed over his camera to the PM. Modi happily clicked the photographer, who plans to mount it.