High rise...& a hard fall!

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was literally left speechless while delivering a virtual address on the opening day of the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss town of Davos on Monday. Speaking in Hindi, he was doing a good job of extolling the virtues of the Indian people until an apparent teleprompter glitch (or was it a technical issue?) abruptly cut him short.

The next 10 seconds were incredible. Modi stole a glance to the left, hesitated for a few seconds, and then raised his hands in exasperation. He froze on screen, unable to utter a word for those 10 long seconds. Although the “glitch” was subsequently rectified and Modi was able to resume the speech, the damage had been done.

The Prime Minister’s inability to continue speaking without seeing the teleprompter and handle the situation with grace has sent the meme army into an overdrive. It seems to have broken the halo of oratory that he has built around himself. Modi’s partymen, and members of the Sangh Parivar at large, tried to blame the faux paus on extraneous factors but didn’t quite succeed in concealing the gaffe.

Things took an almost comical turn when many of them tweeted the exact same message — complete with the original grammatical errors — while trying to defend the prime minister. The use of teleprompters is fairly common among world leaders and so are its glitches. It’s foolish to expect super-busy leaders to memorise their public speeches, of which they sometimes deliver several in a day.

The teleprompter, much like the human speech writer, has become a practical necessity for world leaders. And it’s equally wrong to read too much into the glitch. But what really turned this rather innocuous incident into a faux pas is the way Modi handled it. There have been examples of world leaders taking teleprompter glitches in their stride and continuing speaking after a few seconds of awkward silence.

One such video involving former US President Barack Obama shows how these disruptions can be handled elegantly. Obama broke into an extempore speech as soon as his teleprompter fell down and he was unable to read from it.

Modi could have easily done something similar, after all he was speaking in Hindi, a language he’s totally at ease with. But more than the teleprompter glitch, what has set so many tongues wagging is Modi’s persona or rather the assiduously built cult of his personality. Most of his followers refuse to believe that he is just another leader who is fallible.

It’s moments like these when the mask slides off that rattle his votaries. It must evoke some introspection, both for the PM and his followers who spare no opportunity to attack critics who consider him just a normal individual who owes his position to the democratic process.

Leaders who tend to suffer from delusions of grandeur are the ones who fail to differentiate between genuine praise and hype. The higher they feel they have risen, the harder they fall.