Be it any political dispensation but what has remained the worse aberration in a few cases is the craze by the politicians to allow their personal cult to dismiss the relevance of institutions.
A recent event in the Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad where Modi was with the Australian PM Anthony Albanese for photo-ups. Where the importance of the real event, the cricket, served as a mere backdrop and more interestingly, Narendra Modi accepting his own photograph smelt of a little of self-back-patting. What had gone wrong for the organizers needs no guess.
Both the PMs have one thing in common that, stadiums have been named after them when they are alive! That was these two senior leaders of world stature have joined the league of others like, Â Recep Erdogan, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-un those who have allowed themselves/or their cults to dissolve the purity of institutions.
There is no doubt that Indian PM Modi loves to be photographed at any given opportunity.
But that day’s scene was a bit overbearing when both the leaders were driven by a gimcrack which the media could not lose sight of.
As such the underlying intimacy between politicians and sports people more so cricket, is old one. When the game act as a wall-paper only for the photo-ups.
Or it can be seen that the present rulers in India have inherited the copy-book pattern the erstwhile regime(Congress) had adopted then in what way Modi is different? But a step forward in India to allow self name downright dwarfing the tall institutions by giving own name when one is alive.
In such circumstances, any leader of that height rather should exercise self-consciousness to discard such aggrandizements.
