<div> </div><div><em>When it comes to social media, Modi has displayed an undeniable suaveness, writes <strong>Simar Singh</strong></em></div><div> </div><div>Twitter feeds, Whatsapp chats and Facebook timelines have been flooded with #SelfieWithDaughter after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Sunday "Mann Ki Baat" radio broadcast supported a Haryana village's efforts to promote gender equality.</div><div> </div><div>The Bibipur village held a contest asking people to click selfies with their daughters to win prizes in its efforts to encourage care of female children.</div><div> </div><div>A tweet from the PM encouraged fathers and daughters all over the country to do the same. A great move to push the "Beti Bachao, Beti Padao" (save girl child, educate girl child) programme, it would be difficult to think of any other strategy that could have yielded the same level of involvement that this has.</div><div> </div><div>When it comes to social media, Modi has displayed an undeniable suaveness. Through his tweets and other handles, there is a constant stream of communication that is coming from his end. However a "selfie" may not seem to be a very politically relevant "tool" as the entire phenomenon (despite the fact that even the slightly technologically proficient swear by their phone’s front camera) is generally treated with a dismissive air for its supposed innate frivolity. However, the prime minister has undeniably managed to transform it into an incredibly powerful tool to push his agenda and create an image of his own approachability - one of not being any different from the rest of us.</div><div> </div><div>What Modi’s sustained endorsement of the "selfie" has done is, infuse a certain amount of personalisation in a relationship that has been traditionally been one of detachment, that between a Prime Minister and the nation. Yet at the same time, it allows him to project and offer to the world an extremely curated version of his political self.</div><div> </div><div>Of course, it isn’t as if Modi has deviated from the selfie's raison d’etre of self–promotion. Modi’s love affair with selfies first came into media focus when he posted a controversial photograph of himself, holding up the BJP’s lotus along with an inked fingernail - a portrait of a self-assured politician. The selfies after his assumption of office took a more diplomatic character, as he posted selfies (and also photographs of the selfies being taken) with world leaders like Australian PM Tony Abott and Chinese premier Li Keqiang, projecting friendship between the two nations and promoting himself as an important leader of an important state.</div><div> </div><div>With the "selfie", Modi has managed to capitalize on the human want to share a part of themselves and assimilate a part of others through the same medium - a perfect form of non-verbal communication.</div><div> </div><div>To milk this very potential, the BJP set up set up booths across the capital during the Delhi elections, so that people could take selfies with the political king of selfies himself, #SelfieWithModi.</div><div> </div><div>Modi’s selfies could be dismissed as narcissism or a photographic proof of his megalomania. However, it is undeniable that these photographs have hit the right chord, involving people and drumming up interest in Modi’s politics.</div>
