T N Ninan: Modi on the move

What odds would you have given six months ago that Narendra Modi would be using the birth anniversaries of "Chacha Nehru" and Indira Gandhi to push his own agenda? That is what the surprising Mr Modi has just done. He has also sent the Congress into a minor tizzy by inviting one of its MPs to be an ambassador for his Swachh Bharat programme. This, after launching the programme on Gandhi Jayanti, which was a neat way of appropriating the Mahatma. Ditto with the promised statue for Vallabhbhai Patel, who was not just a Congress stalwart but also a home minister who banned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. What will Mr Modi do next? Adopt all Italian daughters-in-law?!

If you thought you had the measure of the new prime minister, Mr Modi is telling you that you have not. Those who got stuck on Godhra found he had moved on to "Gujarat's pride", and then to development and governance. From the Red Fort on Independence Day, he called for communal peace (though only for 10 years). For someone who comes across as private and even remote, he has surprised by reaching out to children. And at the Indian ambassador's dinner in New York, he stood for two hours shaking hands with over 700 guests, posing for individual photographs with each one.

What he is doing is presenting a constantly moving target, leaving the opposition confused at each stage. Along the way, he manages to dominate the sound waves and imagery - whether in the company of the world's most powerful leaders, or addressing political rallies with bombast that seems to go down well. At each opportunity, he has milked it for all it's worth - the visit to Ground Zero in New York, or the love-fest at the Madison Square Gardens (Mr Modi wanted the show to be so outsize that "the message will be heard in the White House"). The visual messages carefully convey national strength and success: visiting troops on the Saltoro range above the Siachen glacier; commissioning INS Kolkata, the navy's largest ship; and being with space scientists for the launch of a PSLV rocket as well as for the Mars Mission's crucial manoeuvre into Martian orbit. The message is also of cultural nationalism - speaking in Hindi and quoting Sanskrit shlokas (not his predecessor's Urdu couplets).

Government programmes are no longer faceless, and with tongue-twister names; they are now identified with Mr Modi, who is looking for mass outreach. The target at the "Make in India" launch was businessmen, who lined up dutifully. The Jan Dhan programme may be suspect in purist financial eyes, but it has political potential in terms of mass impact. The Swachh Bharat programme, similarly, could have the makings of a movement that goes beyond government and involves ordinary people.

Mani Shankar Aiyar has dismissed him as being not a PM but an EM (for events manager), but you have to admit that "cleaning India" is more imaginative and so much better than the stamp-releases and token charkha-spinning that used to mark the official celebration of Gandhi Jayanti. Still, Mr Aiyar will be answered only if "cleaning India" goes beyond oath-taking with vaguely Nazi-style salutes and ministers putting a broom to what looked like perfectly clean floors. I visited the (still Congress-ruled) Haryana government's "mini-Secretariat" in Gurgaon this week, and found the toilets as unspeakably filthy and non-functional as ever.

Meanwhile, it is striking that the BJP's posters and ads for the elections in Maharashtra and Haryana show only Mr Modi; has this supposedly cadre-based party become as dependent on one man as the Congress has been on the Gandhis? Also, amidst the hoopla, one almost forgets that the government has not done nearly enough, as might have been expected under a hyper-active prime minister. Mr Modi is a moving target, but is his government?