Varanasi, India – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a reputation for mounting spectacular road shows replete with a fawning audience showering petals of marigold flowers on him.
It’s a pattern India has witnessed across multiple cities over the past many weeks, amid the largest election that the world has ever known. And the optics have worked well for Modi in the past in Varanasi, the 4,000-year-old city in the politically vital state of Uttar Pradesh, which is his parliamentary constituency. Here, the congested lanes and bylanes amplify the perception of a packed crowd spilling over for a glimpse of the prime minister.
