Remember the suit that Modi wore? For almost a week after US President Barack Obama’s visit in January, Narendra Modi’s Rs.10 lakh pinstripe suit, with his name embroidered on it a thousand times over, was the only thing that everybody was talking about. In fact, the suit garnered more publicity than the President himself or the First Lady’s designer garbs.
But that was not the end of it. The suit continued to be talked about during the Delhi elections. The alleged Rs.10 lakh suit had changed the aam aadmi’s perception of him, from a chaiwallah‘s son to this state head who spent precious money on getting a fancy designer suit. In fact, after the Delhi election results were declared, some commentators alluded to the suit being one of the reasons for BJP’s colossal loss in Delhi. They said it showed that the Prime Minister was out of touch.
Given the brouhaha that the suit created, it is not surprising that Modi has decided to get rid of it. The PM recently put up the two-piece suit along with 454 items given to him as gifts since he took office in May. The proceeds of the auction will go to the Namaami Gange Trust Fund, or the ‘Clean Ganga’ program.
Now is it me, or does the entire exercise spell out narcissism with a capital N? Firstly, even if it is to be assumed that the suit is a gift by some misguided individual, there is something attention-seeking about a head of state wearing a suit that spells out his name a thousand times over in letters of gold. It is perfectly natural to want comeuppance over a visiting dignitary with a political stature like that of US President Obama. But why not let their exalted positions speak for themselves? After all, ‘classy’ has a voice of its own.
After the Delhi debacle, the PM probably realised his folly in flashing such a suit. So what does he do next? He puts it up for auction to fund one of his own programs, confident that the suit and brand Modi will raise enough money to fund a river cleaning program! Undoubtedly, the suit as well as all the gifts that he received since he took office, are expensive. But aren’t they being auctioned on the very premise that brand Modi will fetch a higher price for these items?
Point of instance here being the kind of bids that the suit has received so far. The highest bid so far has been a staggering sum of Rs. 1.41 crore for the suit at the auction, which will close by February 20. There were a few other bids crossing the 1 crore mark, including a 1.2 crore bid made by a Surat businessman, while several bids were over the Rs.50 lakh mark for a Rs. 10 lakh suit.
“This is a work of charity and when the Prime Minister is doing for a great cause like cleaning of Ganga, I decided to go ahead and buy the suit,” Suresh Aggarwal, a businessman who bid Rs.1 crore for the suit told The Times of India. Nearly everybody who bid at these auctions claims it is for the noble cause of cleaning the Ganga river. The ‘Clean Ganga’ program is being implemented since 1986 by the government and is still gathering dust for all its (non)efforts. And the first time that Modi as the Prime Minister decides to auction off his chattel of gifts, there is this whole cross-section of the society who thinks nothing of donating a few crores to this ‘noble’ cause?
Modi undoubtedly has a very good PR team, as we have all evidenced in the past year and a half, right before the run-up to the elections. They have managed to harness and play up his image in the right manner in order to expand his base and image. But possibly the spin doctors too have now begun believing in what they create. The pinstripe suit with Modi’s name on it, is a publicity overreach that any calculative PR team would, under normal circumstances, never touch even with a ten-foot barge pole. It is not okay bandying about such self-laudatory possessions when you have been claiming to be the people’s sevak. Period.
And although the auction might seem like a clever idea to dispose off an awkward item and even gain something in return; and even though Modi has done several auctions like this when holding the office of Gujarat’s chief minister; this particular charity auction and the premise that brand Modi will fetch a higher price seems to be building up to another instance of publicity overreach.
The Congress party, who had also criticised the suit along with everybody else, displayed a rare flash of insight when its spokesperson, Randeep Surjewala was quoted in The Times of India, as saying, “”The wisdom in hindsight of auctioning the Rs.10 lakh one-time wearable suit is absurd. It will neither absolve nor mitigate the ‘dhanpati‘ [wealth] connections of Modi.”
PR team, please note, because it does pay off to occasionally pay heed to what the Congress says.
But the saddest part about the entire episode is that we have once again received evidence of our janta‘s insatiable appetite for brands and politics.
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