"Modi’s Marketing Muscle" - by CWP alum Manjari Chatterjee Miller

If you go almost anywhere in New Delhi, India’s capital, you won’t be far from a giant poster advertising its presidency of the G-20—a group of 19 large economies plus the European Union—alongside a portrait of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Switch on the TV or pick up a newspaper, and you’ll encounter gushing media coverage about how India’s term in charge of the group represents a moment for the country to showcase its global leadership. Recently, one of us received a mass email from a local research organization offering a training course on India’s G-20 presidency, with the promise of a formal certificate of completion.

The rotating G-20 presidency is usually symbolic: The presiding country hosts meetings and has the power to set the annual theme. Perhaps unsurprisingly, international media covering recent G-20 meetings have focused on the obvious tensions between member states. In March, a G-20 foreign ministers meeting in New Delhi made headlines when disagreements over the war in Ukraine came to the fore. But what the rest of the world seems to have ignored so far is how Modi is shrewdly marketing India’s presidency of the group to burnish his personal image and elevate his party.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/20/india-modi-g20-presidency-pr-marketing-elections/

Manjari Chatterjee Miller is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is also a research associate in the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. An expert on India, China, South Asia, and rising powers, she is the author of Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power (2021, shortlisted for the 2022 Hedley Bull Prize in International Relations) and Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China (2013). Miller is also the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (2020), a monthly columnist for the Hindustan Times, and a frequent contributor to policy and media outlets in the United States and Asia.

Photo Credit: https://pixabay.com/users/pradhanantarip-22490439/