PM Modi gives maximum likes to new-era influencers

Over the next two hours of the event Friday morning, as the Prime Minister presented awards to 21 content creators, it was clear that formal structure had to give way to irreverence. By interacting with influencers individually before giving them awards, PM Modi also gave them ample content for their reels — full of humour, wit, and repartee, even personal anecdotes — the kind of stuff that works well online.

With every award winner having a million followers at least, the content generated at the event — with Modi in the frame — would be viewed by crores in the days to come.

On stage with YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia, who got ‘Disruptor of the Year’ award, PM Modi shared a friendly banter. “Will you give a fitness mantra to people?” Modi asked him, to which he replied, “We should do yoga and meditation.” Responding to this, the PM said, “Then they (people) will say that he is sharing Modiji’s idea, and that you have become a BJP wala.”

The conversation ended with Allahbadia, who runs a YouTube channel called BeerBicepsGuy, and has interviewed several Union Ministers in the recent past, including S Jaishankar and Piyush Goyal, telling Modi, “Aapke saath podcast karne ka mood ho raha hai (I feel like making a podcast with you).” The PM, in turn, asked him to talk about the importance of sleep in his future shows.

In a by-the-way fashion, all of them were nudged towards issues such as insomnia, mental health, environment, health and nutrition, women empowerment, culture and spirituality to work on for their future content videos.

Spiritual orator Jaya Kishori, who was awarded ‘Best Creator for Social Change’, was asked by Modi to dispel the notion that spirituality means renunciation; while travel blogger Kamiya Jani was asked to highlight local products also, while talking about the main tourist attractions in a city.

When Jani asked if she should talk about Lakshadweep or Dwarka (two places the PM visited recently) in her next blog, the PM jokingly said even as Dwarka is quite deep down, and very tough, they would discuss this in detail some other time.

While awarding Swachhta Ambassador award to Malhar Kalambe, who has collaborated with celebrities on cleanliness campaigns and requested the PM to join him in a swachhta drive, tongue in cheek Modi said, “Is chunaao mein bhi safai hone wali hai (This election, too, will see some cleaning).”

Talking about the venue, Bharat Mandapam, the PM said the National Creators have assembled at the same spot today where world leaders gave direction to the future at the G20 Summit last year.