NEW DELHI — Once a month, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, walks into a studio set up at his government bungalow and takes his seat behind a microphone. The air conditioning is switched off to quiet its hum. Thick curtains maintain the room’s silence even from Modi’s favorite peacocks in the garden outside.
Then the prime minister begins his radio show, for which he has recorded more than 100 episodes, with a usual greeting in Hindi: “My dear countrymen, hello!”