Will PM Modi's stage politics at Vadodara university win over Gen Z?

A Y-shaped stage, BookMyShow registration and 'Dhurandhar' moment later, the BJP may still wonder if its youth outreach is closing the gap it opened at Jantar MantarWhen Prime Minister Narendra Modi walked down a specially built Y-shaped ramp at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (MSUB), on September 8, waving to a crowd seated on either side, the BJP handle livestreaming it played a mash-up of Queen’s We Will Rock You and Aari Aari from Dhurandhar, creating a high-octane moment for fans.The event, billed as ‘NaMo for Viksit Bharat’, was the third act in a six-week scramble by the BJP to be seen speaking Gen Z’s language. After the Jantar Mantar protests over the NEET-UG paper leak forced Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation as Union education minister in July, Modi responded with a midnight Instagram reel addressing protesters as “friends”. It inspired its share of memes.Days later, at the Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) centenary in New Delhi, Modi reached out again, calling the alumni “the OGs” and telling students that the SRCC name was “a flex in itself”.Vadodara on September 8 raised the production values considerably: a first-of-its-kind BookMyShow registration system for a government event, QR code entry and roughly 6,000 free slots that purportedly filled within the hour. The choice of venue was not incidental. Vadodara Lok Sabha MP Hemang Joshi took charge as national president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the party’s youth wing, on August 31, succeeding Tejasvi Surya. Staging the BJP’s most elaborate youth event yet in his home constituency, just eight days into his tenure, was the perfect opportunity to announce Joshi’s arrival on the national stage.It also revives Modi’s own history with the seat—he won the Vadodara Lok Sabha election in 2014 before vacating it for Varanasi, making it one of the two constituencies that first sent him to Parliament.The event also inverted the standard grammar of a Modi public appearance. The usual format is a fixed stage or sometimes a slow-moving roadshow through a cordoned route. Here, Modi entered into the seated crowd instead of the crowd being arranged around him. Critics would argue that the set-up looked borrowed more from a product launch, fashion show or a music concert.But underneath the wrapping sat a conventional development speech. Modi dedicated projects worth over Rs 35,000 crore, including three completed sections of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor spanning 326 route km—a project first conceived in 2004 that he said had languished for a decade before gaining pace after 2014. He used the freight line to needle critics, coining a hypothetical “naraz fufa ji” who would fret about truck drivers losing work once cargo shifted to rail. The jibe was widely read as aimed at the Congress and Rahul Gandhi’s own campus outreach ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’.Whether any of this is working remains an open question, and the coverage so far splits widely, with one side effusively commending it and the other, including outlets that have spent weeks writing that ‘Modi’s magic falters’ among the young, terming it as trying too hard. Wire-driven accounts describe a thunderous, youthful welcome. Neither version is built on genuine attendee sentiment data, which is actually best-tested at the ballot. Until then, Vadodara, SRCC and Instagram reels will be evolution notes in political scientists’ journals.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- EndsPublished By: Shyam BalasubramanianPublished On: Sep 10, 2026 19:54 IST