Narendra Modi celebrated his 71st birthday and the whole of India took part in this “historic event” on Friday September 17th. At least that was the wish of his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which deployed considerable resources for this unprecedented exercise of self-celebration and cult of personality taken to the extreme.
The Indian Prime Minister is fond of birthdays. He wishes it every day on Twitter, to his contemporaries, supporters or opponents. But after difficult months, marked by its catastrophic management of the Covid-19 pandemic which officially killed 437,370, between 3 and 4 million according to independent studies, the operation aimed to boost its popularity, which is seriously under way.
As a gift, the country of 1.3 billion people was called to give the prime minister a record “Historical” vaccination against Covid-19. If the official count is to be believed, 25 million doses were administered in a single day, the goal the government had set itself. However, this record does not erase the country’s backwardness: 63% of the adult population received one dose but only 20% two doses. The Indians must wait three months between the first and the second injection, while the season of religious festivals looms, factors of an epidemic recovery.
The BJP has printed 140 million bags of food rations, intended for the poor, bearing the image of the Prime Minister with the slogan “Thank you Modiji”, the “ji” being a mark of respect. It is a question, says a leader of the party, of reinforcing the image of the Prime Minister “As the messiah of the poor”. Fifty million postcards were sent to Narendra Modi as a thank you “Of his contribution to the well-being of the poor”.
A “god” for the minister of the agri-food industry
All day long, messages poured into Twitter along with the hashtag “HappyBdayModiji”. From the president to deputies, including ministers or regional heads of government and of course party members, it was a concert of superlatives to pay tribute to the “Most popular leader in the history of mankind”, according to the deputy Tejasvi Surya, a ” God “ for the Minister of the Agri-Food Industry. “No one has seen God, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi is among us, he is considered God and also decides the fate of the country”, exclaimed Pashupati Kumar Paras.
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