Things that go viral on the internet tend to start small, begin to trend, then blow up across the Web and popular culture. It is usually only after this cycle has been completed that the inevitable backlash begins. Funnily enough, when it comes to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States, the backlash appears to have happened even before the PM landed on American shores – and the media is partly to blame.

India’s news outlets are not known for the restraint, but even by their standards, the coverage of Modi’s first visit to the US as PM has been outrageously hyperbolic. The newspapers have had banner front page headlines well before the visit has even begun, covering everything from what Modi is going to wear in America to what he is going to eat (nothing, he’s fasting for navaratri).

Taking this as a personal challenge, the news channels decided to add even more bombast.


NewsX  ran a live ticker counting down to when Modi would be arriving in New York. TimesNow has taken over an entire studio in the Big Apple, featuring a somewhat subdued editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami anchoring a “New York Newshour”, complete with segments of him looking somewhat uncomfortable as he walks the streets of the city.

Hashtag Watch: #ModimeetsAmerica, #ModiinUS, #NaMosteAmerica. The coverage was accompanied by the usual hashtag creativity as well as promises that every single thing would be covered. TimesNow, for example, promised 80 full hours of coverage from the States. Doing them one better, India TV said it would offer a 100 hours of coverage and insisted that America had become Namorica.

 

NDTV group editor Barkha Dutt is reporting on Indo-US bilateral relations, though she appeared to be at a garba function with people dancing in the background. (She later also learned how to do the Gujarati dance).

CNN-IBN was doing, well, whatever this is.


All this has happened even before Modi arrived in the US. The channels, which appear to have sent entire fleets to America, have promised non-stop coverage of every minute of Modi’s time in the land of the free, even if it involves asking random New Yorkers whether they are worried about terrorist threats. (The New Yorker answered: “There’s always a lot of crime here.”)

As a result, observers are already complaining. Modi might have packed in his schedule, meeting scores of government and corporate contacts, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, delivering what looks to be a sold-out performance at Madison Square Garden and generally “electrifying” New York. Yet R Jagannathan, editor of FirstPost, an ardent supporter of Modi’s campaign for prime ministership, wrote a piece insisting he would be wasting his time there.

“Apart from the ego trip of visiting a country that earlier denied him a visa and some flag-waving at an Indian community meeting and some entirely ephemeral political statement-mongering with President Barack Obama, Modi will largely be wasting his time in the US,” Jagannathan wrote.

The former editor of Outlook, Vinod Mehta, went a step further, saying the entire Indian obsession with America is misguided. “Sigmund Freud said, "America is a mistake, a gigantic mistake." I would not go as far as Herr Doktor. I would rather misquote Faiz Ahmed Faiz, "Aur bhi mulk hain zamane mein America ke siva (there are other countries in this world, other than America),” Mehta wrote.

Few are expecting many deliverables from the visit. Other than getting over the visa ban issue and signing a few Memorandums of Understanding, US Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia Nisha Biswal said that Washington wasn’t expecting any “transformational initiative”.

Usually, this sort of disappointment is saved for the post-mortem. In Modi’s case, the hype was heavy, and the backlash has already started. It makes you wonder what will come in aftermath.