Narendra Modi’s image factory

FEW national leaders are as careful of their image as Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister. He is said to change clothes as often as four times a day, keeping harmony with the occasion. His favoured style is to wear a mandarin-collared jerkin over a short-sleeved kurta, or long shirt. The jerkin was long known as a Nehru jacket, after Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, for whom it was a sartorial staple. But so iconic has it become on the current one that it is now marketed as the Modi jacket.

The boosting of Mr Modi’s image is not just down to dress sense. Since taking office in 2014 his government has spent some $500m on advertising, much of which bears the beaming prime minister’s picture. The 21 state governments run by his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, may have spent similar sums. Even private companies use Mr Modi’s image to promote their wares.

Pro-Modi fare swamps...