NEW DELHI ¨C Once a month, India¡¯s prime minister, Narendra Modi, walks into a studio set up at his government bungalow and takes his seat behind a microphone. The air conditioning is switched off to quiet its hum. Thick curtains maintain the room¡¯s silence even from Modi¡¯s favorite peacocks in the garden outside.
Then the prime minister begins his radio show, for which he has recorded more than 100 episodes, with a usual greeting in Hindi: ¡°My dear countrymen, hello!¡±
What follows ¡ª about 30 minutes of Modi playing on-air host to the world¡¯s most populous nation ¡ª is one way he has made himself intimately omnipresent across India¡¯s vastness, exerting a hold on the national imagination that seems impervious to criticism of his government¡¯s erosion of India¡¯s democratic norms.
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